COACH FERENTZ: Welcome, everybody. Certainly very pleased with last weekend's ballgame, not only the win but how we won the game, fighting through some real tough situations and I thought the guys really stayed together and fought through some bumps along the way. Happy about that.
Our football team has looked at this as a season of opportunity, and certainly our next opportunity is a very formidable opponent. We know we have our hands full with the University of Pittsburgh coming in here.
Our captains are the same four guys, Drew Ott, Jordan Lomax on the defensive side, and Austin Blythe and C.J. Beathard offensively.
Really thrilled to learn that Robert Gallery is the honorary ANF Honoree, and very, very fitting, the last time, one of the last times Robert was back here, I believe it was when he was honorary captain, one of the highlights he had being back here was riding in the Combine with his daughter. Since then, he's added a son, he and Becca have two daughters and a son. We are excited for him.
On the injury front, obviously Drew Ott and LeShun Daniels both left the ballgame the other day. Both guys are rehabbing right now. They didn't practice today but they are making good progress, and it would be premature to make any predictions how it's going to go. But they are making progress and we'll see how the week plays out on that one.
The other thing I want to talk briefly about is Derrick Mitchell and just give you a brief synopsis on that whole thing. When we arrived on Friday I was made aware of a letter that came from the university that afternoon to Derrick, and as you might well imagine, at that point, really wasn't too interested in investigating less than 24 hours from kickoff. We sent Derrick home at that point.
I had an opportunity to visit with Derrick last night and get more information, and after getting a full understanding of the situation, we were really pleased to welcome him back this morning. So he's back with the football team and we'll move accordingly from there.
This is Week 3. It's a very important game, certainly, and a very important week for our football team. The team that we play, Pitt is an extremely talented team. They are a very tough, physical football team and return a large number of returning players, veteran players, guys that have great experience.
I think an interesting side note about this series, it's the fourth time we've played Pittsburgh now since 2008, and this will be the fourth time they have a different coaching staff. So it's kind of an interesting side note to it, and really where it pertains to us, it creates a unique challenge in terms of our preparation.
So we have been working hard on that, and we'll continue to do so. And basically what I told the team last night is you look at the University of Pittsburgh, their football team, from what we have seen from two games of them, we can anticipate this being a full 60 minute type football game, a very tough physical football game because they are an excellent football team.
We are off to a positive start. The real key for our football team now is to try to improve and make sure that we are looking forward, not backwards and see what we can do about taking another step forward.
Q. With Derrick's status, it was a code of conduct violation, and you specifically said in your release that it was not legal.
COACH FERENTZ: Correct.
Q. Do you anticipate there's no legal ramifications?
COACH FERENTZ: Based on what I know, yeah, that's what I fully anticipate and we'll certainly abide by whatever the university decides but I wouldn't have brought him back if I wasn't confident that there's nothing really much beyond what we were talking about right now.
Q. Is he healthy?
COACH FERENTZ: Pretty much so, pretty much so. I don't know if we would have played him the other day or not. We'll just see what it looks like this week.
Q. So sending the release at 6 o'clock or whatever it was last night, it was more of an acknowledgment?
COACH FERENTZ: There was a buzz out there and I wanted to acknowledge the fact that we did suspend him and we did send him home. He was not there physically. He was there briefly. We sent him home.
I think it's important for me to explain why, but we did send him home. It not the right time, and it's more timing than anything else. Quite frankly, I should have gotten to him sooner, but maybe I should have. But we are busy on Sundays, Mondays too, but we got to it last night and I feel very comfortable with what I learned.
Q. Will he be in the plans then this week?
COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, as long as things go as I would imagine this week.
Q. How did Derrick handle the whole situation?
COACH FERENTZ: That's just the way it goes. It's unfortunate timing and, I think our players understand that. We were over there for one reason, to play our best football game, and anything that's going to take away from that, it's not really a time for inquisition and discussion and what have you. We were going there for one thing and that's just unfortunate timing.
Q. About Pittsburgh, you've explained several times your non-conference scheduling strategy overall, but how did this series happen and what do you like about it?
COACH FERENTZ: I'm not 100 percent sure other than it's in an area, region that we recruit, not that we have done much in Pennsylvania. We have not had a lot of success in the Pittsburgh area and it's been a while since we've gotten players from Erie.
But to me it makes some sense, at least it's in the Big Ten region so to speak, and you know, I've got a little bit of a history with the program being there as a grad assistant in 1980, but that's not the reason we schedule them.
I think it made a lot of sense when the series originated and the way it's panned out, it's been interesting, if you look at especially the last two games or last year's game and this year's game, there was a real Wisconsin flavor to the ballclub a year ago and now you throw the film on there's a real Michigan State flavor to it. Wish I could say I was smart enough to anticipate that when we got involved in scheduling. Just one of those logical matchups.
Our football team has looked at this as a season of opportunity, and certainly our next opportunity is a very formidable opponent. We know we have our hands full with the University of Pittsburgh coming in here.
Our captains are the same four guys, Drew Ott, Jordan Lomax on the defensive side, and Austin Blythe and C.J. Beathard offensively.
Really thrilled to learn that Robert Gallery is the honorary ANF Honoree, and very, very fitting, the last time, one of the last times Robert was back here, I believe it was when he was honorary captain, one of the highlights he had being back here was riding in the Combine with his daughter. Since then, he's added a son, he and Becca have two daughters and a son. We are excited for him.
On the injury front, obviously Drew Ott and LeShun Daniels both left the ballgame the other day. Both guys are rehabbing right now. They didn't practice today but they are making good progress, and it would be premature to make any predictions how it's going to go. But they are making progress and we'll see how the week plays out on that one.
The other thing I want to talk briefly about is Derrick Mitchell and just give you a brief synopsis on that whole thing. When we arrived on Friday I was made aware of a letter that came from the university that afternoon to Derrick, and as you might well imagine, at that point, really wasn't too interested in investigating less than 24 hours from kickoff. We sent Derrick home at that point.
I had an opportunity to visit with Derrick last night and get more information, and after getting a full understanding of the situation, we were really pleased to welcome him back this morning. So he's back with the football team and we'll move accordingly from there.
This is Week 3. It's a very important game, certainly, and a very important week for our football team. The team that we play, Pitt is an extremely talented team. They are a very tough, physical football team and return a large number of returning players, veteran players, guys that have great experience.
I think an interesting side note about this series, it's the fourth time we've played Pittsburgh now since 2008, and this will be the fourth time they have a different coaching staff. So it's kind of an interesting side note to it, and really where it pertains to us, it creates a unique challenge in terms of our preparation.
So we have been working hard on that, and we'll continue to do so. And basically what I told the team last night is you look at the University of Pittsburgh, their football team, from what we have seen from two games of them, we can anticipate this being a full 60 minute type football game, a very tough physical football game because they are an excellent football team.
We are off to a positive start. The real key for our football team now is to try to improve and make sure that we are looking forward, not backwards and see what we can do about taking another step forward.
Q. With Derrick's status, it was a code of conduct violation, and you specifically said in your release that it was not legal.
COACH FERENTZ: Correct.
Q. Do you anticipate there's no legal ramifications?
COACH FERENTZ: Based on what I know, yeah, that's what I fully anticipate and we'll certainly abide by whatever the university decides but I wouldn't have brought him back if I wasn't confident that there's nothing really much beyond what we were talking about right now.
Q. Is he healthy?
COACH FERENTZ: Pretty much so, pretty much so. I don't know if we would have played him the other day or not. We'll just see what it looks like this week.
Q. So sending the release at 6 o'clock or whatever it was last night, it was more of an acknowledgment?
COACH FERENTZ: There was a buzz out there and I wanted to acknowledge the fact that we did suspend him and we did send him home. He was not there physically. He was there briefly. We sent him home.
I think it's important for me to explain why, but we did send him home. It not the right time, and it's more timing than anything else. Quite frankly, I should have gotten to him sooner, but maybe I should have. But we are busy on Sundays, Mondays too, but we got to it last night and I feel very comfortable with what I learned.
Q. Will he be in the plans then this week?
COACH FERENTZ: Yeah, as long as things go as I would imagine this week.
Q. How did Derrick handle the whole situation?
COACH FERENTZ: That's just the way it goes. It's unfortunate timing and, I think our players understand that. We were over there for one reason, to play our best football game, and anything that's going to take away from that, it's not really a time for inquisition and discussion and what have you. We were going there for one thing and that's just unfortunate timing.
Q. About Pittsburgh, you've explained several times your non-conference scheduling strategy overall, but how did this series happen and what do you like about it?
COACH FERENTZ: I'm not 100 percent sure other than it's in an area, region that we recruit, not that we have done much in Pennsylvania. We have not had a lot of success in the Pittsburgh area and it's been a while since we've gotten players from Erie.
But to me it makes some sense, at least it's in the Big Ten region so to speak, and you know, I've got a little bit of a history with the program being there as a grad assistant in 1980, but that's not the reason we schedule them.
I think it made a lot of sense when the series originated and the way it's panned out, it's been interesting, if you look at especially the last two games or last year's game and this year's game, there was a real Wisconsin flavor to the ballclub a year ago and now you throw the film on there's a real Michigan State flavor to it. Wish I could say I was smart enough to anticipate that when we got involved in scheduling. Just one of those logical matchups.
