IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD
You gotta love Mack Brown's coaching this season ... especially of the press corps.
He buried the Oklahoma game ball, not only to get his players' minds off the recent past to focus on the immediate future, but to deflect some of the attention away from his players.
Now he has distracted the media again with his "we're not great" comment. I love it. If the Longhorns run the table this year, it'll be because of Colt McCoy on the field, and Mack Brown off the field.
Speaking of Colt, here are some of his quotes from yesterday's press conference:
On offensive coordinator Greg Davis: We spend so much together, he's like my dad. My dad was my high school coach and now he's my coach, so we spend so much time together. He coaches me the same way my dad did. He's not going to let me take a lazy step. He's going to make sure I'm doing the right thing all the time, which I like. That's important, I think, to have in a coach. I think the biggest thing for Coach Davis is he's putting our offense in the right situations. He knows what we do best and I think there is a trust factor there. He trusts us and trusts me in doing what he asks us to do as an offense. We're definitely on the same page.
On the offense playing at a high level right now: We are. We're doing a lot of really good things, especially this last week. We came out and tried to get on the board as early as we could and stay after it, and we did, which is important against a high-powered offense like Missouri. (That will be important) this week too with Oklahoma State. They can score pretty much every time they have the ball, so we're going to have to keep playing to that standard and keep getting better. There are a lot of things we can improve on. We just have to stay focused.
On comparing last season's game against Oklahoma State to this year's matchup: Oklahoma State always plays us tough every year. We definitely don't want to put ourselves in the situation we were in last year. That's something that is really hard to overcome and we were fortunate. We know they're a great football team, I've watched a lot. They're really aggressive. They come after you. It seems like a lot of defenses have been doing that. We've been able to see that and get those looks. We're going to have to handle it just like we have every week.
On whether he knew at the start of the season how good the team would be at this point: I knew the chemistry that we had on this team. I knew how focused we were and how we wanted to win so badly. We wanted to be better than 10-3. I knew that if we took one game at a time, we practiced hard, if we prepared each week, I knew that we had the greatest coaches around that we know of. We have a tough schedule but if we could just say, "Hey, it doesn't matter. Put it all on the line every week. Practice like you want to win and see where we can go," and we've done that. The most important thing is that we continue to do that and not worry about number one. It means nothing right now us. That's how we played last Saturday, and we're going to do the same thing this Saturday.
On dealing with the hype: It's just like I tell my coaches and my teammates - I just want to win. That's the most important thing. If we win all our games, then maybe some awards will come. But it's a reflection of the team. It feels good that I'm playing well. I'm playing well because of my teammates. They're doing the little things right, we're working hard, we're practicing hard, we want to win and we're focused. We're focused on being the best that we can be and that makes you feel good.
On the Oklahoma State defense: They're really aggressive. They're not scared to come after you, they're not scared to blitz people and play one-on-one on the edges. They trust their corner(backs). Their (defensive backs) have been there for a long time. They were all there last year. I think they have a lot of confidence coming into the game. They know they were up 35-14 in the fourth quarter last year. It's important for us to practice hard, to study these guys, get in the film room, because we know they're aggressive, we know they're going to come after us. We've got to have our eyes in the right spot and convert.