Feb. 3, 2003

Head Coach Rich Brooks

On the coaching staff he’s assembled…

“I’m extremely pleased with the staff we’ve assembled here. I mentioned before that this staff would cover a lot of areas in age, region and race. I think this staff certainly typifies that. We have some younger coaches and some older coaches. We’ve got some coaches from this conference, from the midwest and from the west. The most important thing to me is that we have coaches that are not only outstanding teachers, but they’re good people and they care about the young men they’re going to coach. That was the primary concern I had in hiring a staff.”

On having coaches that have ties all over the country…

“I think that will help us a lot. We will spot-recruit different parts of the country where we have connections. We will make Kentucky our main emphasis, and then places that are a four-to-six hour drive from here, in all directions, secondary. The third areas will be further removed and some of them will be more covered than others. Certainly having a coaching staff that has the connections this one does will really benefit us in future recruiting years.”

On if his connections made it easier to put a staff together…

“I didn’t spin too many wheels. I don’t think it was easy, but certainly I had a lot of knowledge about almost everyone that I hired. I had either contact or first-hand knowledge of virtually everyone on this staff. I guess when you’re as old as I am you ought to have some sort of knowledge of something and maybe it benefited me in this case.”

On his first month on the job…

“It’s been very fast with a lot of things to accomplish and I feel pretty good about where we are right now. We have the staff here, we picked up the recruiting, we addressed the team coming back for the spring semester, we’ve watched the players in off-season conditioning, we’re starting to put the playbooks together and signing day is two days away. After that we’ll be fairly intense in the offensive, defensive and special teams areas, getting everything down that we’re going to do. I think it’s gone pretty well and we’ve accomplished quite a bit in a short period of time.”

On the plan he had in putting a staff together…

“I had a plan and I think the key to the plan was making sure I felt comfortable with the people that I ended up with. There were other people I could’ve gone to if some of these gentlemen had chosen not to come here. By and large this is beyond my expectations. I’m extremely pleased that I was able to attract the quality of coaches that are here.”

On the qualities of these coaches…

“You’re talking about two former head coaches, people that have won Super Bowl championships, people that have been with highly nationally ranked teams, people that have administrative capabilities as well as coaching capabilities. It pretty much covers all the things you would want – recruiting, coaching, administrative ability and personal touch with players – all of those categories are covered with this staff.”

On the coordinators…

“Coach (Mike) Archer has a connection with the Southeastern Conference, he’s extremely qualified as a coach. Having played against his teams when he was with Pittsburgh (Steelers) and having watched his teams over the years I was intrigued with the job they did on defense. I knew him personally from his years when he was head coach at LSU. There wasn’t much doubt that if I could get him he was the guy that I wanted to get. Fortunately he had some interest in coming back to the college ranks and I’m extremely excited about having him.

“Ron Hudson’s credentials are unbelievable where he has coached: Notre Dame, Ohio St., Kansas St., UCLA and the University of Oregon for two years on my first staff. I believe in Ron Hudson, he’s a great offensive coach. That’s been demonstrated everywhere that he’s been, and his offensive system fits what I believe needs to be done at this level.

“Steve Ortmayer, the coordinator of the special teams, has two Super Bowl rings while with the Raiders. He has administrative ability, is an outstanding coach and has a lot of administrative and talent-evaluating ability to bring to the staff.”

On how the reception of the recruits has been…

“It’s gone well in some instances and not well in others. I think the reception that this staff has received around the state has been outstanding. I’ve been impressed with the high school football (in Kentucky), it’s very good. There are a lot of good players in the state this year, unfortunately we’re not going to get them all. I would like for it to be different than that and hopefully in the future it will be different than that. That’s kind of how I started in Oregon, too, it was tough to keep most of the players in the state, but after a few years we started corralling most of them and I hope that’s what we’ll be able to accomplish here. By and large the recruiting has gone very well. The players that were committed we’ve been able to maintain them, losing a few here and there. We’ve added some outstanding players that were not committed here. I think this will end up being a pretty decent recruiting class.”

On the personnel that’s coming back…

“We’re still in the process of evaluating last season’s game tapes and the off-season workouts. We’re not where we need to be yet, but we’re gaining on it and getting closer. Now that recruiting is over we’re going to move very fast on that. Overall, I’m very pleased with what I see returning. I think this is a team that’s capable of competing for a bowl game next year. We need to get the players ingrained in what we want to get done, as well as adding a few new players to the mix that will help us get to that goal to send this upcoming senior class to a bowl game that they should’ve been in last year.”

On how fast he’ll have to work in the spring to implement the system…

“We can’t work too fast because we only have 15 practices and only a few of them in full gear. The one thing the NCAA makes sure of is that you can’t overwork them (the players), you have a limited amount of time that you can spend with them. The allotted time we have to spend with them has to be quality time. The teaching has to be good and precise and the players have to learn.”

On his philosophy of teaching…

“I think a good teacher is someone who gets the bottom half of the class to pass it and understand the subject matter. That’s what we have to do as coaches. We can’t flunk our players, because if we flunk our players we flunk. We have to teach our players so that they learn and that’s why I’m excited about this staff because we have excellent teachers on this staff.”

On how different the offensive and defensive schemes will be compared to what the players are used to…

“Defense will change quite a bit. The 4-2-5 will not be played. We are in the process of formulating probably a semblance of a 3-4 defense. After looking at some of our defensive end players that are a little bit in-between size-wise, we feel there are some guys there that will make good outside backers. We will only have four people in the secondary – two safeties and two corners. Offensively, some of the formations will look the same, but how we teach the system will be a lot different. There will be a lot more put on the shoulders of the quarterback mentally to get us in and out of plays. We want our quarterback to be a little more mobile and we will have an occasional run for our quarterback. From what I’ve seen from Jared (Lorenzen) he looks capable of doing that. He’s certainly very difficult to bring down, I’ve seen players bounce off him on blitzes, so we’d like to take advantage of that with a few designed runs.”

On his thoughts about Lorenzen’s playing weight…

“My thoughts on Jared’s playing weight are between Jared and myself, and that’s the way it will be.”

On when he’ll start giving his terminology to the quarterbacks…

“That will be starting really quick. Some of the terminology has already been handed out to some of the quarterbacks. Jared (Lorenzen) is going to have to learn a lot here this year to be prepared to play at the next level. He’s going to have to form a lot better understanding of defensive fronts and coverages and what plays work against those things and what don’t. We’re going to do a lot of teaching with him in that regard and I’m sure he’s very capable of doing some of those things right now, but he’s going to get a lot more exposure to that than he has in the past because we’re going to put a lot on that position to get us in good plays.”

UK ASSISTANT COACHES

Mike Archer
– Defensive Coordinator
On Kentucky’s defensive alignment…

“We will probably base most of our stuff out of a 3-4. But we will be verymultiple, and we were multiple in Pittsburgh. We will probably start outplaying with four linebackers, but there will be times where we will havefour linemen as well. We’re going to have different packages, and a lot ofit is going to depend on whether these guys can handle it spring football,going 15 days, where we are at the time, and then what we can add in August. This is still a feeling-out period for us, but we will play with fourdefensive backs. That will be different than last year, and we will playwith three, sometimes four linebackers.

On deciding to come to Kentucky…

“There’s a lot of reasons. When you’ve been in the college game for 23years and then in the NFL for seven years and you’re in the off-seasonworking guys out, still being around college campuses, you realize you had agreat experience in college football. I missed certain aspects of collegefootball. This opportunity came up with Rich being here, and I had been inPittsburgh seven years. My son is here, my daughter will be here, and youdon’t often have the opportunity to coach at a school like this and haveyour kids there. Life is too short. I went through some things with one ofour coaches in Pittsburgh, his wife passed away at a very young age ofcancer. And because of that, it really gave me a different perspective ofcoaching.”

Steve Brown
– Defensive Backs Coach
On coming to Kentucky…

“It’s an excellent opportunity. It’s a gold mine, and there’s a lot of goodthings that will happen for us here at Kentucky.”

On how Kentucky will defend the pass…

“I think we have not only the talent but schematically we’ll be able to dosome things to keep the offense off-balance and not let them be soaggressive with the forward pass. We’re going to do some different things,change some looks and create a little confusion for our opponent. Eachcoverage will dictate their responsibilities. My job is to make sure theyunderstand what’s being asked of them on each play. So, it depends if we’relocked down in man coverage, where is the help, things of that nature.There’s a lot of integral parts that we’ll be going over with them.”

Ron Caragher
– Running Backs
On replacing Artose Pinner…

“We have some big shoes to fill. He played hard play after play. Next season we will play the backs that will be able to implement our system the best. In the spring, we will try to find a couple of backs we can rely on.”

On similarities between UCLA and UK

“They both have great basketball traditions, that’s for sure. The support for UK is tremendous. It is a treasure and a treat to be here. The facilities here are superior to what I have seen in the Pac-10. The support for athletics at UK is great.”

Paul Dunn
– Offensive Line/Running Game Coordinator
On what he sees from the group of returning linemen…

“This is an experienced group. I was impressed with each guy that came in. The character of the kids is tremendous. Guy (Morriss) did a nice job with these young men. Obviously with him being an old offensive line guy he put some priority in the offensive line and you sure can tell.”

On why Kentucky was an attractive job for him…

“I had coached in the Southeastern Conference before at Vanderbilt and I always looked at Kentucky and thought it would be a great job. Coach Brooks is someone whose career I’ve followed and he’s done a tremendous job. I had the opportunity to go for it and I did.”

Michael Gray
– Defensive Line
On evaluating Kentucky’s talent…

“When Rich (Brooks) first brought me in, I didn’t go out (to recruit) that first week. I actually went back and looked at about half of the season. I looked at the guys up front, of course, to see what I had to work with. I told Rich that I had some good kids, really hard-working kids. Jeremy (Caudill), of course, is one of the guys that I watched the hardest, and (Vincent) ‘Sweet Pea’ (Burns) and (Ellery) Moore. I’ve been to a lot of programs and seen a lot of talent, and I think I have some good things to work with.”

On spring adjustments…

“Only fifteen days, so it is going to be a bit tough. But young people learn how to adjust. Football players learn how to adjust. Coaches learn how to adjust. They’ll get used to me and my terminology. You’ll be amazed in a couple of days how we talk, the terminology we use and the schemes. They’ll pick it up fast.”

On reasons he came to Kentucky…

“Rich Brooks, I played for him, know him really well. I wouldn’t have made the move if I didn’t know the head coach personally. I knew most of the staff, and I felt good about that. There are some great things about Lexington, Kentucky. And the conference has some of the better players in the country, so I’ve always had a respect for the Southeastern Conference. That really intrigued me to come back here.”

Ron Hudson
– Offensive Coordinator
On implementing a new offensive system at Kentucky…

“We have to adjust to the players we have. We’re going to work very hard on putting our players in a position where they can succeed.”

On junior quarterback Shane Boyd…

“Shane Boyd is a very good quarterback. He’s going to be a competitor. I’ve seen some interesting things on film, so I think this is going to be a competitive environment.”

On the starting quarterback position…

“The starter in my mind is more than just being the quarterback in terms of what he can do. It’s what he brings to the table in terms of leadership, accountability and doing the little things. That breeds into the whole offense and eventually the whole team and they follow that kind of player.”

Ron McBride
– Linebackers
On what he’s looking forward to at Kentucky…

“I look forward to watching the players get better at what they’re doing. I like to consider myself a teacher first and my goal is to make my players the best they can be. My goal is to find out where they are and try to get the most out of them. You make your money turning the ‘C’ player into a ‘B’ player and that’s what makes a good coach.”

On how his experience at Utah can help him at Kentucky…

“The guy who this past year was considered by many to be the best offensive lineman in the country was a kid from Idaho who really didn’t know all that much about football. The coaches took him step-by-step and groomed him into a great player, and we did that kind of thing with a lot of players out there. It’s really a 365-day-a -ear commitment.”

Steve Ortmayer
– Special Teams Coordinator
On the special teams unit…

“We’re anticipating having very good teams again, both in the kicking area and the coverage area. Replacing (former punter Glenn) Pakulak is going to be a priority. We need to get more consistent with kicking and long-snapping. Those areas will be addressed.”

On returning kick returner, senior Derek Abney…

“Abney is an exceptional player. He has a great chance to play as a returner at the next level, so we will need him to have another great year for us.”

Joker Phillips
– Wide Receivers/Recruiting Coordinator
On his return to Kentucky…

“It wasn’t that I was just itching to get back (to Kentucky). I saw Mitch Barnhart’s vision for building a championship program. He brought Coach Brooks in, and I had some knowledge of him, having worked with him with the Atlanta Falcons. I thought this was just the perfect time to get back home.”

On selling Kentucky to recruits…

“We have to relay the message to kids here that people outside view this as a big-time football program. The guys at Notre Dame, Minnesota, South Carolina, they see Tim Couch and they see Craig Yeast running up and down the field, and they view this place as big-time football.”

On adjusting to his new job…

“It was difficult. I had a nice recruiting list established at South Carolina, and I thought it was only right to promise the guys at South Carolina that I wouldn’t tamper with those kids; I think that’s only ethical. So I really had to start over with a new list. There were kids in Georgia, Florida and South Carolina that I would have like to have recruited, but it just didn’t feel like it was right. Now I’m here and trying to let the kids here know that this is the right place for them and that Coach Brooks is the guy, because I would not have come back here if I had not felt comfortable with Coach Brooks and Mitch Barnhart.”