4/24/03

Two-Minute Drill: Coach Brown

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Can you tell us how the spring season went?
"We had a great spring. We stayed healthy throughout, didn't lose a guy for next year and also felt that we got more physical and developed more depth. We lost two games in the fourth quarter last year, so our focus was to finish games better. We upgraded our offseason program and were tougher there. We had a more physical spring emphasizing the running game, the misdirection and the play action off the running game. We also felt that we needed to do a better job tackling because our defense didn't fare as well against the run. We had some games where we didn't tackle very well. That was an area we needed to re-emphasize.

	"Right now, we feel that we've got the best staff combination we've had since coming here." -- Mack Brown

The running game was a big focus of the spring. What did you do there?
"We felt that we had a great plan our first year in our running game with Ricky Williams and five offensive linemen, four of which had been around as seniors for a long time and Roger Roesler was a junior. Coach Mackovic left us with a real good bunch and we were able to run the ball for an average of 250 yards a game and pass for 250 yards a game.

"Since that time, we've done a lot of different things in the running game, but we haven't been as consistent on a week-to-week basis as we want to be. We tried to go back and look at what we've been doing that is really good and throw out some of the things that have not been successful and figure out why. We tried to emphasize fewer runs and do them better, add more misdirection and add more play action. That's the real philosophical change if we had one. It was just to tweak some things.

"I think we'll have to wait and see in the fall, but I did think we were more physical this spring. We've been pretty technically sound, and that's been talked about a lot, but I don't think it's been as big of an issue. The thing that we want to do is be more physical."

You added a talented young coach to your staff at the running back position in Mike Haywood. What does he bring to the program?
"First of all, Mike Haywood came from a program that has run the ball really well at LSU. Mike Tolleson and Carl Reese had worked with him and Jeff Madden knew him really well, so they knew he was very aggressive, that he's a guy who had experience as a player at Notre Dame, a guy who recruited Houston for many, many years and in charge of their kicking game. He brings the confidence to us in the running game. He brings some toughness and great credibility with a number of great running backs he has coached over the last eight years at LSU. Right now, we feel that we've got the best staff combination we've had since coming here."