BACK TO WORK
I knew something was definitely wrong with Limas Sweed. That wrist was worse off than most people thought, I guess.
Being gone for the rest of the season is going to hurt his chances in the draft, but the main thing is for him to get healthy again. The other receivers, like Colt McCoy's longtime bud, Jordan Shipley, will just have to take it up a notch.
Here are excerpts from Colt's comments during the Monday press conference (before it was announced Sweed was going to have surgery):
On the Oklahoma game: I felt like we played pretty well against Oklahoma. We’ve put it behind us. I feel like if we can play that way as a team – special teams, offense, defense – play together like that, then we can pull together as a team and figure out a way to win.
On the status of the team: I’m really proud of our coaches, of my teammates, of everybody sticking together. There’s more energy, more focus, more preparation going on now than there’s been. I think that’s really motivation for us. We want to be as good as we can be and we feel like we still can be.
On playing against former UT co-defensive coordinator and current Iowa State head coach Gene Chizik: He has been around me for two years, been around our offense and Coach Davis and everybody, so he knows what we do, but we know what he does, too.
On Iowa State: I’ve seen them a couple times, I watched (the film) with Coach Davis a little bit. They fly to the football. They blitz. It’s like watching spring practice from two years ago, it’s a lot of the same stuff. I feel like in their secondary, they do a little bit more than when Coach Chizik was here. They do more shell coverage, deep safeties and stuff.
On if he expects Coach Chizik to blitz more than usual: No, I don’t expect Coach Chizik to blitz more. He’s a guy who sticks to what he does. He’s a great coach. We miss him. I like him a lot. He’ll have his defense ready to play.
On the offensive line: I feel like they played tremendous on Saturday. It’s so hard sometimes because defenses do different stuff to us every week. They throw different blitzes, and for a young offensive line, it’s a struggle. I can’t be more proud of them for what they did on Saturday, they played really well and they competed and played hard the whole game.
On Jamaal Charles’ fumble: We believe in him, we’re confident in him. You can’t point your finger at anybody. This is a team game, this is a team effort and overall our effort was there. We did the things we needed to do to win the game. It was unfortunate for us that we had a few turnovers. As far as Jamaal, he’s the man, he’s fine. He knows he made a mistake, nobody has to go tell him. He’s hard on himself anyways.
On Limas Sweed: He’s a great player. He’s had some struggles with some injuries, and he’s been trying to play, trying to fight and be out there with this team. His effort has been tremendous, we all respect him for that and understand at the same time that he has a legit injury. If he can play, he can play, if he can’t, he can’t. I feel like he’s done everything he can for this team so far this year.
On Jermichael Finley: I felt like early on that he was getting a lot of man-to-man coverages with the linebacker. I feel pretty comfortable with that match-up because he can run pretty good routes and he’s got great hands.