Game Week Press Conference: Greg Schiano – 10/21/24

GREG SCHIANO: In the interest of times, I’ll get right to your questions. Really, really talented opponent in Southern Cal. We have a huge challenge in front of us, one that we are excited about taking on.

Q. I believe injuries have been a big part of the season but are they just football, or is there one thing you could point to, whether that’s strength and conditioning, medical staff, any processes in the preseason that you think are leading to this?

GREG SCHIANO: No. It’s a very physical game, football. People wear these hard helmets and they wear these hard plastic pads and they are really strong. The strength and conditioning gets them really big and strong and fast, and then they run full speed into each other. Sometimes that hurts them. Sometimes they are so strong that when they go to stop their ligaments and stuff are not as strong as their muscles, right, and they tear a ligament. But there’s no blame. There’s no conspiracy theory that somebody put something in their Wheaties. That’s the way it is. Some years you’re fortunate with injuries and some years you’re not. But the reality is, and that the reality that our team has to understand and the coaching staff has to understand and I certainly understand is, nobody cares. Nobody cares if you have 20 injuries or five, it doesn’t matter. Talking about them — I love that we have the availability report because now I don’t have to talk about them. I just say it’s in the availability report. I like that. Other than that, I have to deal with it. And I meet with my trainers and my medical and strength and high performance every single day. That’s all we talk about is the players. We’ll see. You know, we’ll see who the 74 when they get on the plane. That the challenge, too. You don’t know, we leave Wednesday, you don’t know if he’s going to be ready to play on Friday or not. You have to make a decision, do you take him or somebody else. You say, 74, well, you look at all the guys on special teams that can play 15 plays, it adds up quickly. My issue, not yours.

Q. Going across country, playing a really late kickoff game, have you changed anything else from a preparation standpoint?

GREG SCHIANO: We have. Without getting into all our schedule and all that stuff, we generally go out a day early, just stay on Rutgers time. But when you have an 8:00 start Pacific, I don’t think it’s prudent to stay on Rutgers time. We’ve done it in NFL and college and everywhere and it’s really served us well. The…