Bowling Green State University Athletics
Urban Meyer Press Conference
April 28, 2001 | Football
April 28, 2001
UM: I'm in a pretty good mood because I liked what happened today. We are probably one of a handful of teams in the country that divided up teams on Thursday and actually let kids split up. We didn't play first team against second team. This was a reward for 14 days of hard work and preparation. I wanted to see them prepared in the locker room and pre-game, and they were. More importantly, I wanted to see them go through pre-game and actually play and go out and try to win a game.
You saw at the end I let the Brown team have the ball again. You saw kids trying to play and that is what it's all about. I think you need to be sound, let kids play, let them trust that you are doing things for them and then let them play and have fun. I was very impressed with our team today.
Q: On Being on the sideline
UM: I loved it. I was at a point in my life last year where I needed some change, I needed to do something, I needed to invigorate my personal goals and where I want to be in this profession. To wake up every day as head coach at Bowling Green is a great feeling. I love it here. I love it a lot more now in April than I did in January. It's a nice place and my family is looking forward to getting settled in. It was great to be out there. It's a nice stadium, a nice place. I think you can recruit here and I would not be surprised if we didn't get this thing going in the next few years.
Q: On things that you liked or surprised you
UM: I think offensively there were too many 2nd and 11, 2nd and 12 situations. What you did see was a fast quarterback (Harris) who had a great day. I told him running off the field today "too bad you can't throw or you would be a heck of a quarterback." I don't want him to have that type of reputation, so I keep putting pressure on him like that. The kid can throw, the kid can flat out throw. Now he needs to be more consistent and make better decisions. He is still learning the game.Josh Harris is going to be a fine quarterback. Andy Sahm has had a great spring. He can run pretty good and we quickened his release. He is much improved. David Azzi will eventually compete for a job here too.
Q: On Quarterback Differences
UM: That is something we discussed as a staff and I think it's like the situation at Notre Dame where we had Jarious Jackson and Ron Powlus at quarterback. I don't think we will change the offense. There will be an Andy Sahm plan and a Josh Harris plan and a David Azzi plan. David is more of the Josh Harris mold so we will not change the offense. We won't turn it into an I-formation. What we will do is be more conservative. I think in our second scrimmage Andy Sahm had a 50-yard run on that same play that we use as one of our base play. He will be fine.
Q: On Wide Receiver
UM: We are not good enough at wide receiver. Someone asked me a question about all of the injuries we had since the second day of practice (Gerling and Alexander). Those are two of our four guys that we thought could play in the off-season. Our tight ends are now more important and our tailbacks must become effective wide receivers. Receiver is a significant concern for us. We had two scrimmages where Robert Redd did not catch a ball so Coach Brandon and I said that we have a guy that you must throw the ball to. He had 10 catches for 162 yards today. Bautista has had a good spring but he only had two catches. He ought to be a guy who gets eight or nine catches a game.
