The first 12 questions of the 13-question Joker Phillips' media availability Wednesday concerned the quarterback position. You can see his answers to those, including several comments about Maxwell Smith's health in the transcript below:
Opening statement
Did Max not throw today because he was sore?
That was us. He's on a Tuesday-Thursday throw pattern, and we just wanted to hold him today.
Was he sore after throwing yesterday though?
I'm sure he was, but it didn't matter. We'd already put this (plan). We we're going to throw him on Tuesday and Thursday.
Did Jalen Whitlow get all the reps with the ones?
Yes. He did.
How did he look?
It was practice. It wasn't god-awful. He made some throws.
Fans seemed to focus on Patrick Towles, but did Jalen Whitlow beat him out in camp?
He's third, so obviously he did. We just felt like in the two scrimmages that we had he looked better. He looked better. We just felt like we had to make a decision. We made the decision to go with Whitlow. He looked better in the two scrimmages. He moved the team. He scored a couple times. We just feet like he was the third guy, best option to be the third guy this year.
I think a lot of things hurt the young kid (Patrick Towles). He hadn't been underneath the center a lot. We tried to use him as much as we could without being under the center. Those plays that we did have under the center, he wasn't comfortable with those. We did try to use him in the shotgun a lot. By that time, the other guy had played better.
Did you take the future into account with that decision?
Definitely. Definitely. You've got to. I think in time, he's (Patrick Towles) going to be a great quarterback. No question about that, especially in this offense, what we're doing now. A guy that can throw it. Protection is always going to be something that is going to give a young guy a hard time.
The other guy (Jalen Whitlow) can move around and make plays with his feet. Is he a wildcat guy? I'm not sure he's that. Alan said something to me one day: 'Is Morgan (Newton) going to be the wildcat guy?' Yeah. If we do wildcat, he was going to be it. Jalen, just because he moves around…The wildcat quarterback? You better be a physical guy. That's why you see so many tailbacks being wildcat guys. You don't see many quarterbacks being wildcat guys. Wildcat is downhill, physical. Cam Newton was a quarterback in a running back's body, so it gave him a chance. Jalen is not that true wildcat-type guy. Randall Cobb was a bigger, thicker guy. He's playing tailback in the NFL on third downs. That's a different deal. Jalen is not a great wildcat quarterback.
Was part of the reason you went with Whitlow at No. 3 because he gave you a different look?
Yeah. Definitely. He can move around a little bit better in the pocket and has more ability to escape. You better be able to escape against the guys that we're playing against.
You said Max reaggravated an injury he had last year in the AC joint. Is that something he's always going to have to deal with?
Definitely. I had one as a freshman, and every day I get up (flexes shoulder). It seems like every day now that I'm getting closer to 50.
Is surgery an option down the road?
No. It doesn't need to have surgery. We'll take a look at it after the season and figure it out. He could have surgery, but he doesn't need to have surgery.
Is it tough to get a rhythm in practice with the offense when you're rotating two quarterbacks back and forth?
I'll tell you this: When Max is out there, you can tell that the receivers practice at a different level, definitely. Rhythm? I don't know if it's a rhythm, but I can tell you this: there's a little bit more enthusiasm. When a guy is completing 68 percent of his passes, if I'm a receiver then yeah I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be involved in the passing game. I don't know if it has anything to do with rhythm, but it has something to do with the attitude of our players on offense.
What official designation did you give Max Smith?
Max? No. He'll be ready to play on Saturday, should be ready. We held him out on throwing today. We only practiced him Tuesday, Thursday. We knew that going into it.
Does the amount of reps he gets in practice affect his ability to throw it 50 times a game?
We throw a lot of passes into the flats and all those things. We do throw the ball down the field, would like to throw it more down the field. I don't think velocity will be any issue in this game.
South Carolina likes to get pressure without blitzing. What have you seen in regards to that in video? Have they gotten that kind of pressure?
They have. They're leading the league in sacks with not bringing much pressure. They have two potential first-round guys on the edge. I shouldn't say potential -- two first-round guys on the edge and one in the middle. They can get really good push for them. Why blitz? Again, they're leading the league in sacks and stopping the run with it also. Usually you try to send some pressure on run downs, some run pressures to stop the run. They haven't had to do that. They've given up 67 yards a game rushing, so why blitz? They're playing really good with their front. Then again, when you see their front seven, they've got seven seniors. What's skewed in all this is they're juniors, a couple of them went to prep schools, so they're (Donte) Rumph's age. You've got seven seniors in their front seven and you've got a couple juniors that have been in prep school, so you're talking about older guys. They don't have to. They've got grown men in there.
In his weekly meeting with the media, UK defensive coordinator Rick Minter touched on a number of topics Tuesday, including how his defensive line performed without Mister Cobble against Florida, his freshmen cornerbacks, South Carolina's offense and more. You can read all his comments in the transcript below:
When you went back and looked at the film how did the guys that filled in for Mister Cobble do?
Oh, they held their own. They’re not 315 or 320. That’s part of the issue playing in the SEC. They got knocked down a little bit. They battled hard and they played hard – that was (Tristian) Johnson and (Christian) Coleman kind of filling in. If we had them filling in together, they might be about as big as (Cobble).
We’re not going to invent any new bodies and we can’t put any weight on these guys in three days, so it’s the same guys. They’ll get better. They’ll play with more confidence. One guy’s adversity is another guy’s opportunity. So hopefully Tristian Johnson and Coleman will play better, more confident, more relaxed, that sort of thing.
What did you see from freshman cornerback Cody Quinn, and given how well he played why didn't we see him sooner?
I don’t know. I guess he just started playing good. They’re all three good young freshmen. They’re all three good takes. Fred (Tiller) and J.D. (Harmon) and Cody (Quinn) are all good takes. We got Cody in that previous ball game, and we saw what he could do. We practiced him all week with Cartier’s (Rice) situation, and we felt like of all the kids he’s really going to have the most grace under fire. He’s got calm, cool confidence. He’s out of Ohio. They play great football in Ohio. He played for a good friend of mine. So he’s in there -- not necessarily to stay --but he’s in there to play as we’re going to play all three of those freshmen in there at corner. So he makes us better because he gives Martavius (Neloms) and Cartier a blow. They’re highly involved on special teams, so it gives us an opportunity to play those guys.”
How did your squad improve to make the stops against Florida, especially the back-to-back three-and-outs to start the game?
You know, we kind of got better but we didn’t. Until the end result changes, until we get better on third down, 12 out of 17, until we get better at stopping the run, 200 yards, the result’s not going to change. It comes in spurts. If you get off to a good start, it gives your team a chance. We held them. That 94-3 stat I read that over like the last five years. We helped that a bit because we held them to three. We’re a young team and we’re trying to build on something. So we did build on those three-and-outs early, but once again, our worst drive of the game was the one answering the second half.
That’s two weeks in a row where the worst drive of our game was the second half. So we’ve got to address all the little things, whether it be adjustments, whether it be demeanor, whether it be recovery, whether it be they’re in there chilling now, drinking Gatorade and all that stuff. Do we not answer the bell? You know, we’ve been a slow starting team -- whether it be on offense, defensively or special teams – in a lot of areas timing wise. And we’ve been slow out of the gate in the second half. We’ve got to get that corrected.
How much does does last year's South Carolina game where they were still throwing the ball late in a blowout with backups in stick with you?
They haven’t changed. They’ve done that the first four games. I expect that to be the norm if they have that opportunity. (Steve) Spurrier’s not changing. That’s who he is: a quarterback at heart who loves to throw the ball. They’ve got a great offense, they really do, and they’ve been playing well as a team. It’s put them in position. Even the last play of the game, they don’t take knees. They just keep getting reps to the next unit. That’s kind of their attitude about it: keep firing away, keep doing their offense. It’s our job to stop them, not their job to take the air out of the ball. It’s going to be our job to make sure they can’t do that.
How tough is it to defense Connor Shaw with his running ability as well as passing ability?
You saw what we did last year. Last year, remember, the star was born on our day. A lot of new things that hit our fan last year at this time because of the uncertainty. They’d benched Garcia, and they transitioned. You’ve really got to give Spurrier credit for that last year. They really transitioned their entire offense coming into our ball game in terms of what they really like to do, who they found out they could do it with and that was Shaw and he’s pretty much been on point since and he had a great day on Saturday. He’s been banged up, in and out of games starting with the first one, but we expect a full-speed Connor Shaw and unfortunately (Marcus) Lattimore and all the other cast of characters.
They’re big up front; they’re not real complicated. They run a lot of solid plays, where you know, they try to get a hat on a hat and let Lattimore go. Then they Connor Shaw pull the ball every now and then, and if you don’t cover him, he can beat you much like the kid from Florida could. It’s a good offensive ball club. It’s kind of a 12th-man syndrome when you can have a running quarterback like that, you’ve got to defend the extra, added advantage for them. But we’ve got to find a way.
Our injured situation here: I'll give you some doubtfuls and some questionables. (Mister) Cobble is doubtful. (Gabe) Correll, (Josh) Forrest, (Jordan) Aumiller (are doubtful). Questionable: CoShik (Williams), Kevin Mitchell, Maxwell Smith -- will be day‑to‑day and we'll make a decision (later in the week) -- (Ashely) Lowery and Cartier Rice.
Got another tough opponent, No. six team in the country. Defensively, third in our conference in defense, rushing defense giving up 67 yards a game, fourth in total defense, second in sacks, second in scoring defense, less than ten points a game and (Jadeveon) Clowney leads them with four‑and‑a‑half sacks this year.
And to talk about Clowney, I think one of the things the NCAA should do is issue every team two of those type of guys to make everything even. I would like to have Clowney and (Devin) Taylor, That's what they should issue everybody. (laughs)
Offensively, passing, they're fourth in the league at 259 yards. (Marcus) Lattimore is averaging 4.6, one of the best running backs in the country. And (Connor) Shaw has completed 76 percent of his passes, including 20 in a row last week. So gotta get pressure on him and gotta make sure we challenge the receivers.
Special forces: Ace Sanders is one of the most dangerous guys I've ever seen in punt returns. They haven't had a lot of kickoff return opportunities, and they're one of the least penalized teams in our conference. They overtook us. Last week we had seven, and we were one of the least penalized teams. Now we are second behind South Carolina.
So another huge challenge for us. Got them at home. Five of our next seven are at home. We're excited to be back home in front of our fans. Questions?
Again, day to day. We'll see how well..He’s a lot further along on Sunday than he was last Sunday, obviously. A lot of it had to do with us not playing him this week. We would have had some risks in playing him, so we decided not to (play him) to give us a chance to make a decision for this week.
A lot of people said last year Peyton Manning might be the MVP because of just how valuable he proved to be when he was out, how much the team struggled without him. Did you see a little bit of that Saturday?
We did. We saw some of that with Max, but we expect the next guy to go in and get it done. We just didn't. Max is very valuable.
Anytime you lose your starting quarterback, he's your starting quarterback for a reason. He's not the starting quarterback because he's your worst quarterback. He's starting quarterback because he's your best quarterback. We've had to make decisions on who our starting quarterback is at the start of the season three seasons, and every year we it was the right decision. And it was the right decision with Max. He's our starter. When you lose your starter, you do lose a valuable person in your offense.
Will you rethink how you will prep your No. 2 quarterback this week versus last week because Max may not be able to go?
We've been prepping Jalen (Whitlow) to be our No. 2 since the Louisville game. We worked Morgan (Newton) to be the No. 2 going up to the Louisville game, but after the Louisville game we started prepping Jalen to be our No. 2. When Max went down, we just felt like he (Jalen) wasn't ready, wasn't quite ready to go in in that type of environment.
I've been down there when we put a freshman quarterback in there, and it's pretty tough. And we just felt like we wanted to start Morgan. We did, didn't work out. Didn't play as well as we would have liked, but we still think that that was the right decision.
If the game had been at Commonwealth, would Jalen have started?
Who knows. This is not just the environment. It's the team that you're playing against also. It's a really good football team defensively. So who knows.
Did you just feel like you had one hand tied behind your back in that game because of Jalen's status?
No. I mean I didn't feel that way. I just feel like we just couldn't make a play. All we needed was a play here, play there. We had a couple of guys running open. We also missed some cuts, missed some blocks on the perimeter that would have given us a chance after we did catch the ball, but I don't feel like we had our hands tied behind our back.
At this point, do you rethink at all redshirting Patrick Towles?
You know, I'm comfortable with where we're at, because I think we'll get Max back. That's our feeling, that we'll get Max back. Again, we decided to allow Jalen to be our third and we really think that Pat Towles will be a really good quarterback in time, but we just think that this is the best thing for him and for our program at this point.
What's the diagnosis on Max's shoulder?
He just reaggravated an old injury from last year. So it was a deal where if he'd gotten hurt…If you'd have seen him in warmups, he wasn't 100 percent and if he'd have gotten hurt, they think he could have been out for a significant time, and it wasn't worth risking. It wasn't worth risking, like I said on Saturday. I was treating him like he was ‑‑ you guys would want your son to be treated.
What exactly was the old injury that he re-aggravated?
His shoulder. He had a sprained shoulder, AC joint from last year.
What is the extent of Mister Cobble's injury?
If you saw the last series, Mister Cobble in the last series of the Western game the guy who sprinted from back side to knock the quarterback out when we missed the tackle coming off the back side. After the game he had played really hard in that game, did a really good job, but after the game he had some flu‑like symptoms, then some infection set in, they think in some of his joints. They think it might have set in first in his wrist, moved to his leg. So we admitted him to try to cure some of the infection that they thought he had.
Is he still in the hospital?
No, he's not. He's out. He feels a lot better, but again, for a few days he hasn't eaten anything. Just gotta make sure he gets his strength back. He's a day‑to‑day guy also. We don't know exactly when he'll practice or if he'll practice this week.
So they got the infection under control
They did.
Matt Smith said that South Carolina’s defensive front is the best you faced last year. What do they do so well?
It's speed, power, length. I mean they got guys inside that do a really good job of pushing, pushing the pocket. They got two 6' 6 guys on the edges that are really good speed rushers, and they do a really good job in coverage also. So just overall, again, giving up 67 yards rushing in four games, pretty dang good. And you know, they've given up a little over 200 yards in the passing game, but a lot of that's near the end of the game.
Do they move people around a lot give you different looks?
It's been really, really simple. This is probably as simple of South Carolina team that we've seen. Why would you? If you got front four like these guys do, you don't have to. They get pressure on the quarterback. They're second in sacks, and that's just with their front four. Why would you? As simple as you possibly can and stop people from rushing or stop people from running the ball.
Before the season you were as comfortable with Craig McIntosh at kicker more than any other position on the roster. Is there a confidence issue or a technical issue with him right now?
It's not us having confidence in him. Again, we've been right on… It seems like the teams that we've had a chance to kick the ball, it's been around 42‑plus. It hasn't been anything under 40 that we've had an opportunity to kick. So it's been really tough kicks for him. We haven't lost confidence in him, and just me talking to him on Saturday after the game, he hasn't lost confidence. He's rearing and willing to go out there and kick. And again, I told him this year he's going to have to go in and kick a field goal to help us win. I really believe that. So we have a lot of belief in him and he has a lot of belief in himself.
Has he been missing by much?
Very little. There's the game of those little inches. You know, the 50‑something‑yarder the other day was really close. All the other ones have been really close also because they can get you points.
Matt Smith said the South Carolina loss last year was the worst loss he can remember as a player, and it still kind of sticks with him. Does it stick with you, too?
All of them stick with you. You never lose that feeling. So all of them stick with you. It's just one of them.
When (Steve) Spurrier comes out at the end and says you guys have a good punter …
We got good a punter this year, too. (Laughs).
Do you put that on your bulletin board?
No. Steve is going to say things like that. If I put everything that Steve said up there, we wouldn't have any space on our board. So no, it doesn't. (laughs)
But I'm glad Jared (Lorenzen) and (Brent) Pease came to grips with everything. They didn't score 50.
If for whatever reason Max couldn't go, do you know at this point if you would go with Morgan or Jalen?
No, don't know at this point, but probably Jalen. I don't know exactly if we go with Morgan or Jalen, but I think Jalen would probably deserve it based on the way we performed Saturday. But again, we've gotta go through this week and see how everything works out.
How do you evaluate Max in terms of his day-to-day status?
Again, we gotta evaluate ‑‑ we will not throw on Tuesday. We'll see how well he performs on Wednesday and Thursday. Then make the decision based on that.
How do you go about getting Jalen enough reps to feel comfortable?
He's getting the two reps. And again, we still gotta get Max the one reps. He can't hand the ball off. So we still got to get Max ready. So it's hard to give either one of the guys 100 percent of the one reps. So we've gotta get him all of the two reps and some of the one reps, but we also have to get Max some of the reps. He can hand the ball off; he can make some of the checks in the pass game but not throw the football. So there's a lot of things that we still have to do with him, in case he is the guy on Saturday.
Is it important to get Jalen reps in games?
It is, yeah. We haven't had an opportunity until this past game. He got a few, not nearly enough. Not enough to make a difference.
Is Max the kind of person you have to hold out for his own good?
Yeah. He wanted to play. He's a competitor. You know, I get that. But again, we just thought it was the best thing for him and for this football program.
How you feel like Cody Quinn held up in his first start?
Really good. He played as well as any freshman I've ever been around. The guy challenged receivers, made a huge play in the first series. He drove on a quick screen that he took on a blocker and ran through the blocker and made the play. We're excited about him and all three of those true freshmen that played out there on the perimeter. It's not an easy place to play in this league as a true freshman. I thought those guys held up well, especially him.
Could you talk about Connor Shaw's development?
He's a tough guy. I think last year may have been his really first true start against us last year, and they did some things. They kind of tweaked their offense that week against us, and you see a lot of the same things that they did against us last year they're doing this year. But the guy is really accurate. He actually ran ‑‑ you guys may not get the highlights of it because he was called back -- an 80‑yard touchdown run last week against Missouri, an SEC opponent that the quarterback outran for 80 yards. So he's a guy that can run the football. He's really accurate. He's a coach's son, so he's like a coach on the field. He's a challenge for us.
What does Marcus Lattimore do for them?
Big physical back that always falling forward. He protects the football. He's done a really good job of protecting the football, and he catches the ball well out of the backfield.
You kind of said you didn't know what to expect from your offensive line in the beginning. Since the've played well, do you feel better going in there with them against this South Carolina defense?
Feel better. Last week I thought that this was the best defensive front that we had played against, and our guys rushed for right at 160 yards. We really outrushed them to the fourth quarter when we put some of our backups in. I think they had rushed for 120‑something yards. So I feel really good.
I thought this offensive line did as good as any we've been around against the Florida team because we ran the ball for five yards a carry. And they protected. I don't think we even got hit once at the quarterback position as we were delivering the football. So I do feel a lot better with this offensive line.
And also, (Darrian) Miller practiced on Thursday and only practiced half the practice. In a 35‑minute period he may have practiced 20 minutes of that, and Matt Smith practiced on Thursday the whole 35 minutes. And that's the only practice time those two guys got. We were working Larry (Warford) at guard, center, you know, so he was going back and forth also during the week. So I was really pleased with the way those guys handled it. And I got a chance to watch the video on the plane and talk to Coach (Mike) Summers about it. I thought those guys did really well up front, opening up some holes and understanding the protection and all the blitzes that we were giving. They did a good job of protecting us.
Matt Smith seemed to think you guys were less physical against Western than you were against Florida. Do you have any theories about that?
I don't know that. I just thought that they did a good job this past week for sure.
I remember last year before this game you said if you were an NFL GM you would take Jadeveon Clowney first overall as a freshman?
Again, they should issue everybody one of those. I'm just telling you. He's even better this year. He's a lot faster, a lot quicker off the ball, uses his hands better. Again, he would be the number one pick this year if I was a GM, if he was coming out.
They should let him come out, I think. They should let him ‑‑ huh? Yeah. We could pick him up in the supplemental draft or something. That's one of the guys I was telling you we gotta manage the "oh, shoots." When he's coming at you with a screwed‑up protection, what do I do with the ball? Oh, shoot. Here he comes.
Do you go at a guy like that or do you try to contain him? What do you do when one guy can cut off almost the entire part of the field?
First of all, I wouldn't want to give up anything we want to do, especially wouldn't say we want to go at him. Why would I say and get that guy mad at us also like Brent Pease was? I don't want to do that.
No, we gotta run our offense, but also be aware of where ‑‑ because again, you're talking about go‑to guys, go‑to receivers and all that. Meanwhile if you're focusing on the go‑to receivers and somebody is open, you gotta go through all. If we worry 100 percent about Clowney, there's a guy over here on the other side, Devin Taylor who's 6' 6, and he's kind of getting lost in all the excitement of Clowney. They've got a couple of other guys inside Last year Taylor kind of got lost in Ingram and Clowney. And Taylor's made a lot of plays at South Carolina since he's been there. So we've gotta make sure we're aware of where he's at but also make sure we're aware of where Devin Taylor is at also.
The pass rush this week and the next few weeks in the SEC, is this part of the reason you thought that quick‑pass offense would work well?
Yeah. We get the ball out of our hands a lot quicker. We have people in the flats a lot quicker also, have a lot of different sets, bunch sets. We can put a tight end over there to chip in. We have tight end on one side, tailback on another side and chip their way out from being in the flat, so a lot of things we can do to try to slow down the pass rushing. We've been a big screen team also that's helped slow down the pass rush, which you have to do. You have to get the ball out of your hands quick, have to have some screen capacity and also play actions, those type of things is what slow down the pass rush.
If Kevin Mitchell is out will Trevino Woods be there?
He would, but we think Kevin will be fine. We think he'll play. He's a lot better today than he was yesterday for sure, but we think he'll be fine. And Trevino's got an ankle also. So if either one of those guys can't go, we'll go at the lineup with another true freshmen, in (Jordan) Swindle who played probably 15 snaps Saturday. I looked at the defense once and it was six freshmen, five true freshmen and a redshirt freshmen. We'll just play another one.
You told us on Saturday that Ashely Lowery had a head injury. Is that a concussion?
He had concussion‑like symptoms, but they don't think he had a concussion, no.
Since Spurrier's been at South Carolina they've been known more for defense than offense. What do you make of that?
It's the state. I got a chance to coach in that state, and that's one of the reasons we started recruiting that state because there's so many defensive players. The year I was at South Carolina the Super Bowl might have been … there was New England and someone and there was seven kids from the state of South Carolina and none had played at South Carolina or Clemson. That's one of the reasons why I said, 'wherever I go, we need to recruit this state every year because there's so many players and not all of them are going to Clemson or South Carolina.'
So many guys that, again, don't get rated, aren't rated real high, like Rafael Little that they can't take. They're not taking. But there's a lot of numbers and defensive players, especially defensive linemen. They've got ten defensive linemen on their two deep. Eight of them are from the state of South Carolina. Eight. Eighth. Do you guys remember eight coming out of this state. It's four twice, OK? Eight of them are from the state of South Carolina. Then you look up the road at Clemson, there's probably eight more.
We talked a lot to some of the guys on the staff, some of the guys in passing: 'Man, we gotta find some offensive linemen. We got too many defensive linemen in this state.' Do you ever remember that problem occurring here?
