The quotable Charlie Weis | by Pat

Heading into the bye weekend, Charlie opened up a bit with his Tuesday press conference and touched upon a lot of topics from the defense to the freshman to recruiting. If you have the time, you can watch the whole thing here. The transcript is available here and is a great read. Here are some highlights.

On the plan for the bye weekend.

Now, on Wednesday towards the end of practice, there's going to start to be a mass exodus of coaches because you can only send seven of the 10 coaches on the road at one time, the nine assistants and myself are the 10, and only seven of them can go out there. During the season you can go out for six days. Two of the days we're using are going to be Thursday and Friday of this week. Now, some of those guys will get to see a game on Thursday and a game on Friday. Some of the guys will just go to schools on Thursday and go to schools on Friday and see a game. Some of those guys will see two games on Friday where there's an afternoon game on Friday and there's a night game on Friday. But the coaching staff will be out.

On field goal kicking

One stat that probably, as I wrap-up my initial comments, one stat that kind of surprised me more than any, this year we're three for six on field goals, but I was not cognizant until I went back and looked at where the field goals take place, that from inside of 40 yards, Carl is three of four. The two misses - he has two misses between 40 and 50. Anything less than 40 yards, he's three out of four, where last year in that 30 to 39 range, we were two of three. This year we're three of four. Last year we kicked two short ones at this time. This year we've had no attempts from that same area.

I think part of those stats when I look at them are the fact that I'm asking him to kick a couple longer field goals than we were kicking at this time last year.

On the freshman quarterbacks

I think that both those guys are night and day improved over when we got 'em, okay? Just the mannerisms of running the huddle is night and day improvement.

But I think on different weeks they've both showed their wares. What we do is we have one of them, even though they don't get any reps, one guy during the week, when the one guy is the lead guy on the show team, the other guy is up watching Brady the whole week. If Demetrius has the show team for the week, then Zach is up along Evan and Brady going through the offense for the entire week. If Zach has the show team, then Demetrius is up for the whole week.

We have a whole plan of attack so that those guys aren't just show team players, they're show team players like every other week. We've gotten the benefit from both them playing where they get almost every rep on the show team for the week, plus them also being coached with what we're doing and how we're doing it.

On if he wants the defense to be more aggressive

Well, yes and no. Sometimes Rick hates when I'm saying, Bring it, bring it. Yeah, I actually do have a clicker. I am actually on the defensive headset, contrary to popular opinion, okay? I don't say as much as I do on offense, obviously. But, you know, I'll correct a personnel once in a while. Doesn't happen very often. I'll tell everyone to quiet down so Rick can talk. There's a lot of things going on there. I'll give a hash mark or I'll say, Big screen down.

The defensive coaches, they basically run the show there. Just sometimes I'm the one who gets antsy in conjunction to how I'm thinking on offense more than them getting antsy.

On Sam Young

He's one of those guys who just keeps on getting better every week. He does. He keeps getting better every week. From the first game to the fifth game, all's he's done is getting better, to the sixth game, is get better every game. That's what you'd hope for. A lot of people talk about the wall, like the freshman wall. He actually is playing better each week. That's the furthest thing from his mind, I'm sure.

On why all of those BGS letters go unnoticed.

I ask not to be given the mail. How is that? I only answer mail as it pertains to more personal issues, somebody dying, somebody sick, some kid's going through a tough time, his dad is in Iraq. Those are the type of things. Those are the ones that I ask for. I really don't care what people think positively or negatively because what can I do about it? I can't change their opinion. My job is to try to do as best as I see fit to run the program accordingly.

What will happen, if I read them, I'm going to start getting mad at people I don't even know. You think about it, I just can't spend the time and energy doing that.

On running up the score for the polls.

I don't know, we went from 12 to 8 with a 31-10 victory over a team that was 0-5. Usually you'd say yes, but it didn't pan out this week. This week you thought we would have dropped eight spots the way things are going.

Is there a little influence of me on that vein? Yes. But I really think it's disrespectful, not only wrong, it's disrespectful to play a game to run the score. I really think it's disrespectful. I'm always going to think that way.

Now, are there Notre Dame fans that are going to say, God, I wish he'd go score another two touchdowns? My wife and son want me to do the same thing. Just so you know, they're not alone. Just tell them they have supporters in my own house.

On James Aldridge

The fact that he came out of the game with those few touches not being sore, that means now I can give him more. You have to make sure you can give him what he can handle, first of all. I wanted to try to get him eight touches in the game. I got him four. I wanted to get him eight in the game. Unfortunately the game really wasn't put away yet. I wanted to make sure the game was put away.

It was a nice day. The field was firm. My intent was to give him eight touches. Four was enough where I could get him in the training room, they could go check on him, see where he was. He came out of the game pretty good, pretty well. I think that means you can up the ante a little bit.

On recruiting and only having 9 verbal commits.

What if the number is a lot more than that? Maybe it is.

First of all, the only reason they're public is because they say so. When a kid tells me, yes, we cannot say anything to anyone, for two reasons. Number one, it's not our right. Number two, you risk the kid, the kid who already has given you his word in private, getting turned off by the fact that you wanted to make it about you, not about him, even though that's illegal. So nothing's ever coming from me. Nothing's ever coming from us.

If the word comes out, it's never coming from us anyway. So what's the difference between a public commit and a non-public commit? It's whether the kid wants to tell somebody or not. That's the only difference. People don't know how many people we have that are coming here. We could be done. We're not, but we could be (laughter).

On Quinn and the Heisman

Let's see where he gets drafted in the NFL draft. There's been a lot of Heisman Trophy winners that have been terrible NFL football players. Let's see where he gets drafted. If he gets drafted up there top one or two, makes $50 or $60 million, I don't think I'll be too upset.

On the perils of getting in to work before dawn in the summer.

No. I have had some interesting things, though. I'll end on this one. I have had a couple of interesting - probably the most interesting one I've had so far were guys on reunion weekend trying to steal my golf cart at 4:30 in the morning coming back from the bars. I looked at them and I said, What the hell are you doing? We're trying to steal the golf cart. I said, It's mine. I actually put them on my golf cart and drove them over to the dorm and piled them into a garbage can, got them back there. I have had some - when you come in early, you do - there are some interesting things that you see walking in early in the morning.