..... MICHAEL BROCKERS: I feel it's a very important aspect, because when you have a good first?team defense and then you get your second?team defense in there, they're even hungrier to make plays and they're going out there sacking the quarterback and getting interceptions.
I feel like with the depth that we have, that makes our defense even better than it is.
JOHN CHAVIS: It's not by consequences that it happened this way. We intend to play. And when I say up front ?? and people will only use this against you in recruiting, but we're going to play ten defensive linemen if we've got ten healthy guys that can go in and give us quality snaps. What it does for your football team, it builds that depth. It builds that depth.
And, listen, we lost two really, really fine players from the interior of our defense last year. And we didn't miss a beat. We didn't miss a beat because the guys that came in there ?? I could name several names ?? but Michael being one, but they didn't miss a beat because they'd been in the wars, been in the battles.
What happens, if you know you're going to play, you prepare a different way. That's just human nature. So our guys know they're going to play. They prepare. And when they get those opportunities they want to show the coaches and the team, the rest of the team, what they're capable of doing.
And, again, it makes us have the depth that we need and it gets the guys excited about going to practice, going to get better and preparing for games.
You can only get so good in practice. You've got to go play in the games before you're going to reach that level and gain the confidence that you need. And that's what we've done.
We've been fortunate this year we've been able to do it in the secondary. With our depth there, and we've had to move some people around, and certainly Ron's done a great job, as well as our guys, our young men have done a great job in terms of being able to move around and play different positions. And when you've got parts that are interchangeable, it allows you to do a lot with your defense.
So that's part of what we do. That's part of what we do in terms of getting them ready to play.
Q. Coach, could you talk a little bit about Eric Reid and his progression recovering from the injury through Bowl practice and what his status is for Monday night?
JOHN CHAVIS: He's full a go. There's no aftereffects. I think he's 100 percent. And certainly probably could have played a little bit earlier. We didn't feel that we needed to take that chance, and we wanted to get him healthy.
And, again, obviously played very well in the championship game, in the SEC championship game. Hadn't missed a snap in practice. Like I said, he's full speed.
Q. John, I don't know if you've been asked this, but what kind of job did you guys think you did on Trent Richardson the first time?
JOHN CHAVIS: Trent's a great player. And really you look at Trent and the entire offense. They've got a great offensive line. They've got a quarterback that runs their system well. He ended up with a bunch of yardage.
Certainly when you have a player gain that many yards, whether it's passing or running, you can't say he did a real good job. That's obvious. We kept him out of the end zone, which was the biggest thing. We played well when we had to.
And they're good enough to gain all the yardage that they need. There were some plays that we were a little bit out of position. And when we met with the team first thing Monday I took responsibility for that because there were some things that I didn't prepare well enough for and didn't prepare them well enough for.
So he's a great player. He's plenty capable of earning anything that he wants to, and certainly he's a big part of their offense.
But to say that we did a great job on him, I couldn't tell you that, because I don't feel like we did. But it wasn't because of the players. I mean, part of that had to do with our preparation, and that was on me. I didn't do a good enough job in preparation.
Q. He was over at 100 yards at one time and ended up, I think, with 89 and was really knocked down late in the game by some big plays by you guys. Did that have a net effect the other way, of your defense just maybe wearing him down? He carried 23 times, I think.
JOHN CHAVIS: I don't know that you ever can wear a guy down like him. He gets better, and some of the better backs get stronger as the game goes on. And certainly he has those kind of qualities.
Like I said, he's a big, physical back. But you're going to see a lot of those guys in the SEC just about every week. And I wouldn't want to be one that rated any of them. You're going to see quality backs that you have to play against. We see them in spring practice.
That's part of what you have to do in this league, because it's a league that, if you're going to have success, you're going to have to run the football.
If you're going to have success, you have to stop the run.
Q. Coach, you prepare for Nick Saban teams with various offensive coordinators on his side. What ties Nick Saban's offense together? What are the common threads you've seen over the years, and what are the keys to stopping those?
JOHN CHAVIS: I think one of the things they do well is they play to their defense. And what I mean by that is they're not going to put their defense in bad situations. They're not going to turn the ball over.
They're not going to give up field position. They do a great job of running the football, being physical. And then their play action game is really ?? it's really tough to stop when you're committing as many people as you have to to stop the run. And that's always been the same. I mean, that's what they've done.
And I think when you do that, you are to a certain degree playing to your defense. And certainly we've got an offense that does the same thing. And they do a tremendous job of possession time. I mean, that's important when you look at it at the end of the game, who had the ball the most minutes, who turned it over the fewest times. And those are two areas that will tell you a lot of times how well you played.
Q. Mo, I'm wondering if you could tell me your recruiting story a little bit, how you ended up at LSU. I understand you weren't the most highly recruited guy coming out of Shreveport. And, John, could you talk about Mo's season and what he's done for you guys?
MORRIS CLAIBORNE: LSU was a place I always knew I wanted to be. A lot of guys from my high school, like Ronnie Prude, Reginald Robinson, and Stromile Swift, all those guys came from my high school to LSU. So when I was young, I already knew where I wanted to be, and that was LSU. When I got my opportunity, I jumped on it.
JOHN CHAVIS: Let me tell you a story that went on, not as much during recruiting, but after recruiting. Like Mo said, he knew where he wanted to be, and certainly we were excited about that. We have not been surprised by the success that he's had, because we knew he was a great athlete.
We knew he had a big, big, big upside. And the biggest thing really was which side of the ball was he going to play on. And we battled that.
But obviously the head coach makes the final call. And he felt quite comfortable that we would use Mo.
And I told someone this two years ago, and I think it's a compliment to both, because everybody talked about Pat. And Pat Peterson was a great football player, still is. You see what he's done in the NFL. I said we won't drop off, because Mo's going to be every bit as good. And we felt that strong his first year in.
We didn't ?? as we look back, we didn't get him as many snaps his freshman year as we probably should have; that, again, you look back and had we got him some more snaps, I think he would have come around even quicker.
But there's been no surprise by what he's been able to do. And it's as good a football player ?? I could say it about both of these and about most of our football team. They're not all perfect, but I'm going to tell you you won't find two better young men in college football anywhere in the country than these two guys sitting beside me. They're great, great young men. You know what they've done on the football field. But I guarantee you, the things that they do and the things they believe in, you know, will qualify those statements that I made in terms of them being great young men.
Q. Coach, you talked a lot about Trent Richardson. What challenge does he present to you when they put him out on the line as a flanker, whatever, and try to get him in space?
JOHN CHAVIS: He's hard to tackle. That's where he makes his biggest plays. And I think that's been true all year. And you watch him in protection, he does a great job in protection. But even when he's in protection, you better be ready to play him because he'll come out of protection. And they've got a quarterback, if you do a good job downfield, they're going to lay it off, going to get it to him in a lot of different ways.
And when that happens, he does a great job running with the football. So he's a very talented guy no matter where you place him. And, like I said, very difficult to tackle. Very seldom does he go down in a one?on?one situation. You've got to get numbers to the point of attack when he has the football.
Q. John, it's been talked about a lot that you emphasize speed with your defenses. But can you go into detail about how you use that and some of the philosophies you use, you employ using speed?
JOHN CHAVIS: Just a couple of areas that I can hit on real quick. Number one is that to play our scheme, you have to be good at cornering, you really have to be good there. Not at one corner but at both corners. Have you to be. And it takes speed to play out there with the matchups you're going to be involved in.
The same thing with rushing the passer. And our base package ?? our defensive ends probably aren't the biggest in the country, but I think when you start looking at speed, it would be hard to find many that would rate better than ours in terms of speed.
And we've got good size. We're not undersized. But we emphasize speed because that's what it takes to rush the passer. Then we'll go into our dime personnel, we use a lot of corners and/or safeties that do a great job blitzing for us.
And, again, when we start looking at a guy that's blitzing that's 180, 205 pounds, somewhere in that area, going against a 330?pounder, then we feel like we have that advantage in terms of making him work and doing some things with the pass rushing with smaller guys.
So those are the areas that we look at first. But it seems to me that luck follows speed. And we need all the luck we can get from time to time.
And then I say that jokingly, but our guys do a great job. They play hard. They play fast. And certainly even going back to the Oregon game, you know, that was a big factor in terms of us having the kind of success with the speed of our defense.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you.
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