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OPENING STATEMENT
KIRK FERENTZ: Good afternoon to everybody. Happy Election Day to all of you.
I'll just take a minute and look back a little bit over the weekend and then we'll talk about Michigan State a little bit and our preparation for them.
Just like Saturday, we're disappointed with the outcome of the last ballgame. I think looking back, looking at the film we saw some improvement in certain areas and I think we have improved as a football team over two weeks. I think we have the potential to become a good football team, but certainly there's work to do right now.
Standing here right now, we've had two one-possession losses and it's like any one-possession loss, there's a handful of plays in both games to really decide the difference between winning and losing and typically it's in all three phases. That certainly was the case again on Saturday. Like any game, it's a team effort.
So it's a team win or a team loss, and the bottom line is, I think all of us can find ways to do things a little bit better, whether it's coaching, or any one of the phases, offensively, defensively and special teams. That's where our focus has to be.
Our guys have done a lot of good things over the past six-seven months. Certainly very unusual circumstances, unusual times. I think the guys have handled it well day-by-day, week-by-week and where we stand right now is, what we need to do is keep pushing forward and see what we can do to try to get over on the winning side of things, and it gets down to focusing on improvement and that's every practice, every day, not looking too far down the road and doing a better job in the detail. That's what we need to be doing right now as we move forward.
So as it stands right now, we are an 0-2 football team. Nothing about that feels good. But our focus and encouragement to our players is to focus on the remaining 80 percent of the season. There's a lot of football left, and all of us know that we need to play better. Hopefully all of us realize that we can play better and that's our goal as we push forward.
Moving on to Michigan State. We still have the same five captains this week: Gholston, Niemann, Sargent, Linderbaum, and Duncan.
Injury-wise we had a couple guys banged up a little bit on Saturday like you would expect in a game, but I think everybody has a chance to be ready to go this week, so we'll see how the week pans out. We've only been on the field one practice so far.
And as we look towards Michigan State, certainly a lot to talk about with them. First of all, we haven't played them in a couple years and they have a new coaching staff. Coach Tucker has done a great job up there in short time and talking about crazy circumstances for a new staff, I think they have done a wonderful job already. It's been a few years since we have played them, but I think we are fairly familiar with a lot of personnel through recruiting and watching them on crossover film.
They are coming off a really big win against an in-state rival. That's always a big thing, a trophy game. They certainly played well last week, deserved to win, and the big thing is that they are playing well and they are playing hard for the new staff, so things are coming together very well for them, no question about that.
The other obvious thing apparent from their game, they made a lot of big plays especially in the passing game, quarterback, receivers had a big day and that was really the story of the game. That really gave them a chance to be victorious and a great effort. We have a big challenge on our hands. We realize that fully and need a good week of practice, a different week of practice, certainly.
It's interesting, we have three weeks that are going to be different. This is the first of those three that are a little bit unusual and we just have to make the adjustment. It's the same thing for all the opponents we're playing in those weeks. Those are the challenges ahead and hopefully have a great week and we're looking forward to getting back on the field on Saturday.
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