Monday morning presser

Rich Rodriguez

- Molk tore ACL and will have surgery as soon as swelling goes down. He will be out for the rest of the season. If everything goes well, he will be back by the summer
- Odoms hurt knee but didn’t tear anything
- Minor is day-to-day with an injury to his other foot
- Hemingway is also day-to-day
- Moosman is back at center
- Molk felt good. Coaches thought he was running well. Just an unfortunate accident
- Tim McAvoy and Rocko Khoury will get reps at center as well
- Seem to have a few more technical errors and missed assignments than normal. Maybe players are trying to do too much.
- Two games without forcing turnovers. If you want to win against good teams, you need to be on the positive side of the turnover battle.
- Going to work on holding onto the ball this week in practice. Need to be more fundamentally sound. On interceptions: Need to trust reads and not force anything. In college it’s a little different.
- Denard’s confidence is fine right now after the turnovers. Have to coach him up. Coach Smith is working with but the coaches don’t have a lot of time in college.
- Delaware State game didn’t give the team too much confidence.
- Some of the drops from receivers weren’t made earlier in the year. Some of the balls could have been better thrown.
- More of a gray area with holding calls.
- Five men in the backfield penalty: They generally warn you and they warned them one time. From the angle on film, it looked like the fifth man was on the line of scrimmage. Had it called twice but both times, thought the fifth man was on the line of scrimmage.
- When Denard threw his pick, there was a 12th man running off the field for PSU.
- Script 10-12 plays or formations to get done early. If you get third downs, you come off the script. Don’t remember how many of the scripted plays were on the first drive.
- Lot of talent on Illinois. Had bad luck and turnovers in key moments.
- Juice Williams looks the same as last year. Had some turnovers but knows that they aren’t always his fault. Remembers what Williams did to Michigan last year and take that into account.
- Problems will be fixed both with more time on the field and through recruiting. Need two full recruiting classes to address needs. Have more than 70 on scholarship because of walk-ons, so numbers are down.
- Recruiting going well, but there are still important roles that need to be filled.
- One of the problems with JUCO are the credits that won’t transfer to Michigan.
- Donovan Warren had a sore ankle. Should be OK.
- Roh has improved with experience and recognizing plays.
- Happy with how the defense has progressed at times. Some of the big plays came from PSU making good plays. Sometimes they were defensive problems.
- Darryl Clark said there was confusion on defense. No one was out of position, but there were technical problems (problems with gaps, etc.)
- Kick off returns have been very average because haven’t done as good a job blocking.
- Kovacs still a walk-on. Will get a scholarship when they have one available.
- Rodriguez probably micromanages defense too much already. Trusts defensive coaches. All a matter of getting players in position to make plays.