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University of Minnesota Athletics
Brewster Pre-Spring News Conference
3/22/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Minnesota Head Coach Tim Brewster - Pre-Spring Practice News Conference - March 22, 2010
"Obviously we're very excited about the start of spring practice. Coming off the bowl loss, the only way to get that taste out of your mouth is to play the game and get back at the game. I couldn't be more pleased with the way our players have responded. They've done an excellent job in the winter conditioning program. I think that's a part of our program that Mark Hill and Will Peoples, our strength coaches, do just an outstanding job. We came back today off of Spring Break this morning and had a 6 a.m. run. Our guys ran extremely well, and I think they're in great physical shape to start practice tomorrow.
"The two things that we need to accomplish this spring, most importantly, are the development of our young players. We're going to be a young football team, a young talented group, but we've got to do a great job as coaches and teachers each and every day this spring of developing the players on our football team and particularly the young guys. The other thing that I'm most excited about with our team is the competition that we're going to have this spring. We've got competitive situations across the board, offense and defense. I think the kicking game is fairly in place with our punter and our kicker. We know who those guys are, but there's going to be daily competition, and that's so exciting for me as the head football coach because that's something that you strive to develop in your program: a situation where each and every day every guy on our team comes to practice knowing that if he isn't at his best somebody else can step in there and win the job. Basically what I've told our team is, 'If you want to be a starter on our football team, go win the job. Go win the job.' The development of our players as coaches, the competitive situations, the competition that we're going to have amongst our players is really a key thing.
"We're going to be a young football team, but I feel that there's a lot of talent. I'm very pleased with what we've done recruiting-wise the past couple of years, and it's going to be fun to see some of these kids who have red-shirted, that are young in the program, to see our coaches coach them and turn them loose and let them go compete to win a job and help our team.
"We're preparing to play one of the toughest schedules in the country. Joel [Maturi] and Marc Ryan and myself have worked really hard at our schedule. Last year we played one of the nation's most competitive schedules, and this year again we're going to play one of the toughest schedules in the country. It's a schedule which we embrace. We embrace the fact that we're going to play a very challenging schedule.
"I think it's so exciting for our players to open up against a championship football team on Thursday night against Middle Tennessee State on the road. That's a tremendous challenge for our football team, but again, like I said, and I've always said this, I think it really helps your offseason workouts, your offseason program to be playing challenging teams, challenging schedules. I'll tell you this: that first game down there at Middle Tennessee State is going to be a heck of a football game. They beat a really good Southern Mississippi team in their championship game, in their bowl game, at the end of last season. I've looked at them very closely already, and they've got a lot of very talented football players.
"We embrace our schedule, embrace the competition we face each and every week, and it's exciting for our fans. I couldn't imagine the University of Minnesota having a more exciting home schedule than we're going to play next season. The teams that we've got coming into TCF Bank Stadium, for our fans, it's really exciting and for our team, as well.
"(There is) nothing complicated about what we're going to try to get done this spring. We're going to go out each and every day, and we're going to compete like crazy and show great passion to finish. Show great passion to finish. That's something that we haven't done as a football team as well as we'd like to do, is finish football games, finish plays. We talked this morning about how two years in a row we were up at halftime against Wisconsin and didn't finish the game and lost the game. We've got to do a better job of finishing everything that we do and so that's a mantra, a model, for us as we prepare going into next season is to be a better finishing football team not just in the fourth quarter, but in the third quarter, and that's something that we're going to talk about each and every day.
"I feel really good about the staff additions, Steve Watson and Jeff Horton. I think Jeff Horton has really come in and there's been a very seamless transition with Jeff. We haven't changed a bunch of the (terminology), we haven't changed our identity, what we're going to do. There's nothing complicated about what we're going to do. We're just going to try to be more efficient and better at what we do. We want to be able to run the football, there's no secret to that. We are going to run the football, and that's something that we'll really focus on this spring. I'm really pleased about Jeff joining our staff. I think he'll do a great job helping coach our quarterbacks. He's a long time quarterback coach, a fundamentalist at the quarterback position, and I'm really pleased.
"Steve Watson comes in here with a great deal of experience. Here's a guy who played almost 10 years in the National Football League, was an all-pro wide receiver for the Denver Broncos. But I think more importantly for me, he was a free agent coming out of Temple, and he's just a hard-work guy. He's a hard-work guy and his work ethic is outstanding. I think he'll do a great job with a young group of talented wide receivers.
"I think Kevin Cosgrove, Ronnie Lee and our defensive staff has really taken the steps toward us being a very good defensive football team. What's going to be exciting is to see the young guys."
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