Sunday Football Wrap-Up

Sept. 7, 2015

The following is a transcript from Sunday's teleconference.

Q: After seeing the film, can you elaborate on the play by Vayante Copeland?

Mark Dantonio: I thought Copeland played very well, especially for a red-shirt freshman, first time out there. He had two really big plays in the football game, one tracking down the kickoff return for a touchdown-saving tackle and then also the interception at the end. He tackled very effectively, and he played off-balance pretty well throughout the game. He was matched up against an older player, an experienced player, a good football player, Corey Davis and I thought he did a nice job.

Q: Connor (Cook) said after the game, he described his play as fairly average. I am just wondering how you thought he played in the opener?

Mark Dantonio: I thought Connor played probably average for him. If you look around and look at other players, quarterbacks, playing, it might be considered winning, but I think it was average for him. I thought his passes were crisp. I thought his passes were in small windows, I don't think there's any question about that. A lot of throws versus tight man coverages that needed to be in a tight window, and I thought he threw the deep ball pretty effectively. He missed on a couple but he was pretty good, zero interceptions in that capacity. I think it was fair in the way he evaluated himself, pretty average. He probably needs to do a couple different things, missed a couple throws but made a couple of big-time throws too. I think if you were at the football game and watched him, you would come away saying he's got a great arm, (fit it in) tight windows. He took zero sacks. He had the one fumble situation where it was overturned with the penalty, but he was protected pretty well and had time to throw.

Q: I'm wondering what you're evaluation of tackling overall was? You've talked before about maybe a little less contact now, different rules and things like that. Do you think that's a factor in tackling in a season opener at all?

Mark Dantonio: You always practice tackling and you tend to work on it a lot in two-a-days, but as you go into game week and you come out of last week where we gave them a couple days off, you're not going to tackle live like that. You're going to do some drills to try and simulate it, but you don't really put them on the ground as much. More than anything, I think our leverage on tackling was not as good as it needs to be in some cases, on a couple of third downs. I think we got a little leg-tired. I think we need to play more players maybe. It was the first game and we had a hot week of practice. We had not had that kind of heat prior to. I think we were a little leg-weary. A couple of their players did a nice job on it too. From a tackling perspective, we've got to continue to get better as a football team, but we've always been a good tackling team and we're going to reemphasize it.

Q: I'm just wondering if you could say what you saw watching the two long kick returns on film and how you'll address that going forward?

Mark Dantonio: What we saw was a guy not taking on the two-man wedge with the proper leverage. We saw a kicker go underneath a block like he's a safety, if he stays outside of it, he'll turn it back, it'll be a 30- or 40-yard gain, but not the distance that happened two times. We had a fold player get knocked off and not fold correctly and we had a couple other guys go unblocked and didn't make the play. It was good execution by Western (Michigan) and there were two kickoff returns, one was different from the other. One went on a wedge and the other was counter coming back the other way, they changed it up on us. We need to correct those things. They will be corrected. We had younger players running down as well, so we need to change up some things. We can't have it though. It's not acceptable.

Q: Curious, how vanilla were you guys able to stay on Friday night?

Mark Dantonio: In terms of what we do, we got them in long-yardage situations. I think sometimes that we were trying to protect guys out there for their first time. I think we were trying to say, ok let's go easy on this guy and try and protect him will calls and coverages and things of that nature at times. You can't do that, you've got to just make calls and play the situations of the game. We had them in some long-yardage situations and let them out. When it's 27-7 and we keep them down on the 4-yard line, that's third-and-21, I think you can feel pretty good about the end result. Again, when it's 34-7 and we stop them on that series, you're going to feel good about that or 34-10, I believe. Give credit to Western. They kept playing and they kept playing with energy. At the end of the game, they were playing with more energy than we were on their offensive side of the ball. I think that creates some doubt sometimes. We need to maintain who we are and our leadership needs to come out.

Q: I want to ask you about your third-down package. You mentioned Western's proficiency. How much does that have to do with the alignment, the 3-3-5? Is that something that you look at as far as personnel or is that more of a team thing?

Mark Dantonio: First of all, I think there were players in position to make a play and they've got to make the play. In every case, there are always structural weaknesses in any coverage or any front. There could be potential player blows, M-As, missed assignments. There are physical problems. We got the ball thrown on a seam on us one time, a ball thrown over a head one time when a guy should've been playing off one time. Knowing the situation, we've got another situation where we had three guys left to right and we lost leverage. On another quarterback scramble, we lost leverage. We've got to just play better and congratulate Western's players for making some plays. In terms of scheme, you play schemes to try and get off the field. You try and vary things. We didn't unearth anything there, we didn't do anything we hadn't done in the past. There's carry-over.

Q: Just to follow up, the time of possession, I think you have to go back to 2013 since you lost time of possession. Was that as much on the offense as it was on the defense?

Mark Dantonio: The time of possession in the first half, I'm sure went heavy our way. Then in the second half in the third quarter, we scored and then they had a 16-play drive. That sort of skewed things a little bit. At the end of the game, they had that long drive with six minutes left again. We had scoring drives successively, I think. It got a little bit skewed, but you are correct, we have not lost possession time. The play numbers were almost the same, but we've not lost possession time too often.

Q: Just wondering what is Drake Martinez' status right now with the team?

Mark Dantonio: If the guy didn't play, I don't like to talk about him, but there are no discipline problems. Let's put it that way.

Q: Statistically, Jon Reschke had a better game than Chris Frey. I'm wondering from the film if there is separation from the two? Did Jon secure that spot?

Mark Dantonio: I think Jon Reschke played pretty well. I think Chris Frey was not as productive as Jon was relative to opportunities and things of that nature. I think that both are good football players. Jon Reschke is the starter right now; Chris Frey will play in other situations. Both are good players that could go back and forth a little bit. They're both young players, but I was not disappointed with either of their play. I think Reschke played better.

Q: Did you see anything from your running backs that would change the depth chart in your opinion for the Oregon game?

Mark Dantonio: I think those are the types of things that will be squared away in practice this week, but they're all good players. They all played well; they are all productive. We've got to just see how practice goes and who gets the nods in certain areas. I think they were all very productive.

Q: Oregon's defense doesn't necessarily have the highest or the best ranking, but when you look back at even last year's game, they were very effective in defending your run on first down. What did Oregon do so effectively and how much better prepared will you be for this year's team?

Mark Dantonio: Well, we're going to talk about Oregon on Tuesday, but there's a little bit of a history now since we've played them once. We're going to look at them more thoroughly and talk about them on Tuesday.

Q: Who stood out from the receivers?

Mark Dantonio: I thought Aaron Burbridge had a great game. I thought Macgarrett Kings played very solid. I thought DeAnthony Arnett had a couple of nice catches and got his first touchdown. That was exciting to see because I know his confidence is going to take off. R.J. Shelton had a couple of catches as well, but those were the guys that we sort of focused on. There were some tight windows out there. We made some 50-50 catches as I like to say with people hanging on us. We had some big plays.

Q: A follow up on Drake Martinez, is this a long-term injury situation then?

Mark Dantonio: I won't talk about injuries.

Q: I know it was just reported, but are you able to say anything about Mark Meyers at all?

Mark Dantonio: I suspended Mark Meyers for an incident last night. He is suspended indefinitely.

Q: Could you please talk about Jake Hartbarger's performance? Coming off the spring, how encouraged were you what you saw Friday night?

Mark Dantonio: I am very encouraged. I thought Jake did an outstanding job on his first time punting. Fielded a low snap one time. He had some big hits on punts, dropped one inside the 10 as well. I thought he did an outstanding job for his first time out, and it'll be exciting to watch him grow.

Q: Coach, you talked about the offensive line rotation. I think Mark replaced six or seven guys, how deep does that need to be?

Mark Dantonio: That's a good question. I think we played our five guys predominately. We did play Miguel Machado and Benny McGowan somewhat. We played seven guys. You play guys as they become ready to play, as they become game-ready and you talk about those things, but you need to be in a situation where you can play those guys as well. We'll always play our best players and put ourselves in a situation that protect our quarterback, to win and run the football.

Q: Any other freshman that we could see play? I think only two true freshmen played, is that correct?

Mark Dantonio: That's correct. Andrew Dowell and LJ Scott played. A possibility of playing a couple more, but we'll know more about that this week.