Q & A: Bobby Bowden Sunday Teleconference- Part 1

During his Sunday teleconference, Bowden also talked about costly breakdowns in the kicking game and the continuing criticism he is receiving now that the Seminoles have slipped to 4-4 after losing three of four games in October.

In terms of getting ready in practice, do you make that decision on Monday? What's your normal course of action, in particular if you decide to make a change?

Bowden: Well, it might be that we can't answer that. It might be that the doctors say Drew's not ready, and the answer is already there by the doctors. Or it could be that Drew is ready to go again, and so is Lee, and we'd have to decide, 'Well, which one of you is going to get the first reps?' We don't have to decide who is going to play until game time. But I don't think it's a drastic situation. You had a first-team quarterback who couldn't play. Then you've got a second-teamer who got in there and played like lights out, you know. So it's a nice problem

Can you talk more about the way Drew was injured and how much he could have played against Maryland if he had been needed and how limited he might have been?

Bowden: Drew, Wednesday, I believe . . . This is the way I understand it. Now somebody had in the paper today, or somewhere I heard, that he was hurt in his room or something. But we were out there practicing Wednesday and I noticed, I was up in my tower, and I noticed that while we were running plays that he was sitting over there on the bank with ice on his ankle. I was thinking, 'What in the world has happened here?' Of course, I stayed up on the tower, and Xavier got all the reps. I noticed he was going first team and Drew was not there. When I came down I asked what was wrong with Drew, and the trainer said he turned his ankle. They say he was just warming up and it was kind of like he tripped and something was wrong with his ankle. I said, 'Well, do you think he will be OK for Saturday?' The trainer said 'Yeah, I think he will.' So anyway I thought he would be out at practice. Well, he was there but he didn't do anything again. So then I talked to the trainers and they said they will do what they need to do to it. 'I'm sure he'll be ready by Saturday.' Now, so Friday Ð we didn't work out Friday Ð he was better. That was the only response I got, that he was better. Then Saturday, Daryl (Dickey) and Jeffrey (Bowden) informed me that we would probably have to start Xavier in the ballgame because Drew . . . The doctors were a little concerned about Drew if he plays. He could get knocked out for the year, and so and so. I said, 'Well, let's wait until the warm up . . . Lets warm up and be sure. I think he'd be less likely to make mistakes, so let's warm up before the ballgame. So we warmed up, and everybody agreed, including the doctors, that Drew should be held out. So anyway, that's the way that went.

Did you go into the game trying to simplify the game plan for Xavier or were you confident with all the practice he got during the week that he could execute what you wanted to do against Maryland?

Bowden: I don't think we changed a thing.

When do you make a decision on who starts Saturday?

Bowden: When will we make a decision? I'm not sure. If it's close, it will probably be as late as we can make it. If we felt like we should do this or do that . . . And a lot of it is we've got to wait to see how is Drew's ankle? Then go from there. I feel much secure now by what I saw happen the other night. It makes you feel like you've got two quarterbacks instead of one. Now comes, how are you going to use them?

You said you had never seen it from Xavier in practice, and he hadn't done it in games, but that was about as good a game as a quarterback has played for you in a long time.

Bowden: Well, it sure was. It most certainly was. It reminded you of some of those great days that Chris Rix had. He had great days like that, just not every week. But now, that was an amazing thing. We put him in for one quarter at Duke and he had three interceptions in one quarter. Now you put him in again in the fourth quarter and he does real well. The question is, 'How's he going to play now?' In the past it's kind of been that way . . . But that is the first time that, boy, he really made some things happen. I was wanting him to run, and yet, it seemed like when I put him in the game he was reluctant to run. He'd run and kind of get to the sideline, and I wanted him to take off and try to score, and he did that yesterday. I don't think anybody told him to. I didn't tell him to.

Antone Smith was talking today about the calm Xavier had in the huddle. Is that one of the things that surprised you?

Bowden: No, it didn't surprise me a bit. He's calm. He's a calm individual. What disturbed me was what happened when you snapped that ball and got into trouble, what would he do with it. And in the game Saturday, he did just opposite of what I had been seeing.

Xavier said, and some of his teammates confirmed it, that he had done well working with the ones and twos Wednesday and Thursday. Had you built up a little more confidence, a little more comfort, even knowing that Drew might be ready to play, from those two days of seeing Xavier playing?

Bowden: Yes. Yes. Watching him work Wednesday and watching him work Thursday, and I watched him very closely. I usually spend most of my time watching our quarterbacks. I watched him closely. I said, 'Gee, it looks like he knows what we are trying to do.' He was doing it pretty good in practice. So yeah, I felt much better about it. If I hadn't felt better about it, I don't know what I would have done. But after watching him work out Wednesday and Thursday, and then Daryl and Jeff both felt better about him.

The defeat is obviously deflating, but did you sense that there was something invigorating about the offensive performance that may provide something of a silver lining in a season in which some goals have already disappeared?

Bowden: Well, we might have had as many drives for touchdowns and for scores . . . Maybe as any game this year except the ones like Duke and Rice where the other team was out-manned. We probably had more drives for touchdowns, because they didn't give us nothing. What was the closest touchdown we drove? They didn't turn it over a time, did they? So anyway, you had to drive a long way to score, and we hadn't done that frequently. That was very encouraging.

Now I looked at the film . . . We lost the game in the kicking game, that's where we lost the game. That's the thing that disturbs me the most. I'm going to address it with our coaches when we meet (Monday morning). We've got so many guys on our kicking team that normally would never even be playing that are going out on punts and going out on kickoffs, and missing tackles. I think we've got people . . .. We're simply going to have to put some starters over there. You know, we did that with (Geno) Hayes in the Duke game. We put Hayes on the kickoff team because we got ripped the week before by N.C. State. They brought that kickoff back 60 yards and we had walk-ons and subs in there. So Kevin said we are going to have to put first-teamers back in there because we can't afford to give up that kind of yardage. So we started Hayes against Duke and he gets hurt. That's the only thing you are scared of. If you've got a big lead, you can go ahead and get them out. Well, the other night, we had a lot of . . . I looked at the numbers of kids, and wondered, 'What in the world is he doing in there?' But again, it's a case you've got (all the injuries). Usually the people you want on your kickoff are your defensive backs and linebackers. We had so many of them hurt we had to use a lot of walk-ons.

Anyway, when I look at that game Saturday, if we could have won the kicking game, there's no doubt that we would have won the game.

Is it fair to say that if Drew is healthy that Xavier has forced a difficult decision?

Bowden: Yes. Yeah, like I said, the only way I know how to address it, is that it's a good problem, but it is a problem because there is going to be a lot of disagreement whichever way you go. That's where you have to call on your kids to have great unselfishness, and see what happens. But again, if Drew doesn't get better, it ain't a choice.

You've had a policy that a guy can't lose a starting job because of an injury. How do you weigh wanting to be faithful to that policy with what a kid does when he comes into a situation like that and provides a spark you might not otherwise have? Is that part of the difficulty of making a decision about who starts?

Bowden: I don't know where that . . . statement came from. Yes, I do. We used to have that rule when I first came here that you can't lose your job through injury, that if you came back you got your job back. That a guy had to beat you out on the field. Now we stuck by that sometimes, but there have been plenty of other times that we haven't stuck by it. That's kind of a rule of convenience. We're going to play the guy that we think can help us win.

Since you are 4-4, is this something the team can rally around with the competition between Drew and Xavier?

Bowden: Well, they've got to do that. The competition will probably help. But you have to remember this . . . Even though (Xavier) had a tremendous game, and even though he surprised everybody, and even though he gave us a running (game), we still lost the game. We still lost the game, so you have to keep that in mind, in fact, too. But, again, what are we going to do about that? Right now I don't know. We'll have to . . . I think I will have to have input from the coaches, and I think we'll have to watch practices this week and see what we are seeing.

You've talked about how Xavier has never come to you and said he wanted to transfer because he wasn't playing, but a lot of kids in his situation might have looked to leave. So Xavier has to be a little different in that regard. Did that surprise you about him?

Bowden: Does it surprise me? No. Now let me say this - had he left, it would not have surprise me. I've always said stick with it, stick with it, stick with it. I can give him good examples. That's what history can give you. I can say, 'Do you remember we had ol' Casey Weldon and we had Brad Johnson here, and Casey beat out Brad in the middle of his junior year. Both of them were juniors. Casey won out when he went into the Auburn game and led us to a lot of scores, So here is Brad, with another year of eligibility, and so does Casey, and (Brad) is a second-team quarterback. But he stayed with it . . . Now, the pros are going to find you no matter where you are. If you are second, third or fourth team, they are going to find you . . . So anyway, Brad Johnson gets drafted and Casey gets drafted. Well, Brad is still playing pro ball, and Casey played a certain amount of years. But it just happened that one of them was better off as a college quarterback.

I tell them that. 'Men, this is what happened in the past. Don't get impatient.' If you've got the stuff, they are going to find you wherever you are and you don't have to transfer to some little ol' school or go out west or somewhere else. They are going to find you.

You never know what's going to happen. What if the other guys gets injured? You are starting. And that's exactly what happened. So I think (Xavier) has enough maturity not to leave.

Now do you remember we had another quarterback when we had (Danny) Kanell. Kanell had another year. This other quarterback had another year, so he left and I never heard from him again. Nice kids. Great kid. But I never heard from him again. He could have gotten discovered here just as good as anywhere else.

So I think Lee is smart enough to see that and is mature enough not to do anything stupid.

Have the doctors given you any indication that Drew will be ready to go this week?

Bowden: I haven't talked to them. Unless it's something tricky, I would guess he would be about ready. But it could be . . . Randy Oravetz explained to me that it's like a foreign object in there . . .You get a chip on your knee, on your cartilage in your knee . . . If you have a cartilage that chips, it will get in the joint there and it might not bother you, then all of a sudden it falls into a position where it feels like your knee is coming off. Then in another day, it works out again. So that could be the type of thing he has in his ankle, something that is floating around in there that got into a bad position, and kind of locked it up . . . I don't know. Randy or the doctors could give you their side of that.