Jim Tressel Work Quotations

One thing I always believe about recruiting is you end up where you should, and things work out. But you have to go and do the work, and Brady's gone and done the work. He's taken his experiences and grown from them.

If the first game was today, Justin would start and Troy would probably play significantly. We'll go into preseason where both Justin and Troy will get work with the first group.

I think we learned some things about ourselves today. We saw some good things and we saw some things we need to work on. We didn't play a lot of our veterans because we know what they can do. It was nice to see some of our younger players step up and make plays. I thought we really played hard, but that didn't surprise me. Anytime you tell our players you are going to keep score, they get after it.

We really work hard before the season and during the season ... at focusing on what's going on this second. I think there's a lot more people outside of our building that talk about that (the BCS), what's going to go on in January and whatever.

We've made a decision to have Troy get the bulk of the work and probably 75 to 80 percent of the reps in practice with preparation being the key word there...We think the best decision is for Troy to be the quarterback and get the bulk of the work.

We believe if he continues to improve and work hard, he can be a very, very good player for us.

Both Troy and Justin had good work today. ... They shared the reps and they'll probably share the game. Exactly who will play the first play and who will play the twelfth play, I'm not sure, but I think they both deserve to play in a big game like this and they will.

Every play is designed to work and every defense is designed to go against every play. It's just a matter of who executes and they won.

They all are blessed with physical abilities, but I think their strength in large part lies in their intellect. They work together like they're on a string.

All of our guys are happy that we've got that guy. They've watched how hard he's focused this spring, they've watched the work that he's done. He proved that in front of 63,000 going down (the field) on that first drive.

Absolutely. I think the consistency, or lack thereof -- where we are at this moment is not where you'd like to be after three games. We haven't done little things across the board. Everyone likes to discuss what we haven't done at quarterback, but we could talk a little bit about all the way down the line, where we need to get a lot better. We need to get a lot better fast, because when you start playing against the Big Ten defenses, yards and first downs and points are even more difficult. So we've got a lot of work to do and we've just got to get at it.

It was good, hard work and good, physical, competitive kids. They want to be good. They want to uphold the tradition of excellent Ohio State defense.

It's real troubling. Not just with youngsters that it becomes newsworthy, but with any kids who don't go the direction you know they're capable of or hope for them. It's one of the tough things when you compete. Sometimes things work out and you're successful and sometimes it doesn't. That doesn't have you back off from competing and teaching and trying to help people.

I think our guys have a handle on the fact that while the national championship is a goal, what work you do today determines whether you have a chance at that or not. And so I think they're a pretty focused group on living for the moment, getting better.