Media Thursday: Eastern Illinois Week

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana will host Eastern Illinois on Saturday, Sept. 7, in the team's home opener at Memorial Stadium at 3:30 p.m. EDT. The game will be televised live on BTN. Head coach Tom Allen met with the media on Thursday.

Opening Statement…
"Thought we had a good week. We had to correct the negatives from the game and build off the positives, so it was a big week of emphasis for tackling on defense, even today in a spiders practice we did a drill for that, and every single day. Running the football, doing a great job with our technique up front offensively and doing a better job of catching ball. Making sure we eliminate those drops. Just trying to address the things we need to address and clean things up, get better. We want to be a better football team when we take the field on Saturday this week than we were last Saturday. That's our goal."

On the difference in practice from Week 1 to Week 2…
"When you are playing another opponent, it always exposes things. Everything you've done all spring and fall camp has been against each other, so you really don't know if one side of the ball is stronger than you thought, not as strong as you thought, whatever. And then you have a lot of new guys too. A lot of guys, it's their first game or first start, so they are getting a chance to do that for the first time. Sometimes guys perform better than you thought they were going to perform and sometimes they don't perform as well, but then they get that first game under their belt and they come back Week 2 and they're much more comfortable. The biggest thing is being able to coach off the film. And now you have another week, you have a team that played usually the week before, so you have some specific things that you can work on rather than just going through every game last year and guessing on what they're going to do."

On how much it helps for younger players to see themselves on film…
"I think it's huge. You can't put a price tag on it. All the reps you get tackling, whether it's positive or negative, you still have great things to coach off of. We even made some adjustments to how we present things to make sure we're getting it right. I think for both sides of the football, execution on offense and being more comfortable with what we're doing and having a quarterback that has a game under his belt, full set of reps. Just being able to let those guys be coached, accept the positives and negatives that come from a Week 1 performance and get better."

On the availability of DB Reese Taylor…
"I expect him to play. He's been here, back all week. It was 50/50 last week and we probably could have played him, but chose not to and I'm glad we were able to keep him for another week to keep him healthy."

On the offensive line playing with a chip on their shoulder…
"Well, they took it personally and I called them out on it to be able to run the football better. It's a proud group, there's three seniors on there that are some of our biggest, strongest guys on the team, some of our best leaders. Loading the box or not, you have to run the football. I expect them to respond in a positive way."

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