BOULDER—University
of Colorado head football coach Dan Hawkins held his weekly press luncheon
Tuesday, where he wrapped up last weekend’s 29-27 victory over Georgia at
Folsom Field and previewed this weekend’s match-up with Missouri in Columbia,
Mo. (Saturday, 5 p.m. MT, FSN).
ON MISSOURI—“They are once again a very talented football
team. They have a lot of speed and athleticism, which make it tough on you. I
think their quarterback is largely underrated. I think he is pretty good, I
think he is really good. We have had a tough time against them. They have done
good against us. We have to do things that can’t hurt you. Our guys are feeling
good about things and are up for the challenge.
We are looking forward to going back there and getting Big 12 play.”
ON BLAINE GABBERT BEING UNDERRATED—“You just don’t see his name come up. He is a big strong guy that can run. He has a
big arm. He does a nice job. I think he is a good player.”
ON MISSOURI BEING TOUGH ON CU—“Offensively, they spread you out. That in
and of itself is an issue. On defense, they will attack you. They are an
athletic team and can give you problems on their speed on both offense and
defense."
ON PREPARATION FOR MISSOURI—“I’m not sure how that compares to them. I
think for us, our guys have put six pretty good quarters together. That means a
lot to them on having some consistency there. I think that is good for us.
Where they’re at and how they feel their preparation is, I don’t know.”
ON COMPARING THINGS TO GEORGIA—“You’re not going to be perfect. In the
Georgia game, we did throw an interception. Our goal is to have one turn-over
or less in a game. I think is pretty manageable and reasonable. We only had
three penalties. We didn’t turn it over a bunch or have a lot of penalties.
Things would just end up killing you that way. And then you have a chance to do
some positive things.”
ON HAVING TROUBLE AGAINST MISSOURI—“Last year we didn’t convert some short
yardage situations, which hurt us. We turned the ball over, which hurt us. We
had the fake field goal, which we knew was coming. Even though we probably knew
it was coming, they ran for a touchdown. The game kind of slips away from you
that way. They had a big play early on, on us defensively.”
ON GETTING THE TEAM READY PSYCHOLOGICALLY—“We don’t ever try to get into a whole bunch
of that,, of ‘Oh these guys are awesome and we have to be supermen, or they
guys are no good, we’re going to roll over them.’ Our whole deal is trying to
get better and maximize our level of competitiveness and efficiency.”
ON SEEING JOSH HARTIGAN EMERGE—“There are always so many great stories like
that on teams. He came here as a guy that we’re thinking, ‘Well he’s a tight
end, he’s a linebacker. He is kind of athletic and he can run.’ When he comes
here, we’re trying to find a niche for him and we’re not quite sure where that
is. He goes through some trials and tribulations just like a lot of kids, but
he is able to make sense out of it and hang in there. He goes over to scout
team, which I’ve played it and nobody likes to play it. You want to be under
the lights. He proceeds to tear it and we can hardly block the guy. We can’t
keep him out of the back field. He is disrupting every play. To his credit, he
stepped up and I’m always looking at every one of those guys going ‘How can we
factor them into what we do?’ It is great. He ends up being a defensive line
and he is a little bit under size, but he has a tremendous heart and plays
hard. The one sack that he got by himself was flat out effort.”
ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LAST YEAR’S GAME
AND THIS YEAR’S GAME—“Part
of it again was the score of last year’s game. When you’re in a back and forth
game, it is easier to run the ball a little bit more. When the game gets away
from you, you start to throw it more. Our consistency is coming together a
little more. Knock on wood, we are healthy. We haven’t had a lot of times where
we’ve had these five guys playing all the time on the offensive line.”
ON COACHES DECIDING TO STICK WITH THE RUNNING
GAME—“We you
start getting further away than one score, it gets a little more slippery
slope.”
ON THE PLAYBOOK—“We always get that question of ‘How much of
the playbook did you show?’ You don’t invent a whole lot of things, in terms of
formations or shifts. I don’t know many teams who just say ‘These are the plays
that we run and then we run them week four, and week six, and week twelve.’ The
playbook is always never ending. You have a base set of runs and passes that you
are going to use, but you’re always tweaking that.”
ON CODY HAWKINS—“It has been great. He wants to be a coach
and he probably will. He is very perceptive. He is great at dissecting things
with Tyler and he is great at knowing what is going on at practice. He is kind
of a mini coach out there. He has a different understanding from a player’s
perspective.”
ON SCOTTY McKNIGHT—“Scotty is good. He is dinged up, but that’s
Scotty. You can ding him, but you can’t knock him out. He’ll be alright.”
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