Everything Sherrone Moore said during Big Ten Media Days press conference
THE MODERATOR: Our final coach today is Michigan's Sherrone Moore. Coach Moore, welcome, and we'll begin with your opening statement.
SHERRONE MOORE: Awesome. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Very humbled and excited to be here to represent the great University of Michigan, our football program, our players, our coaches, our staff. What an unbelievable job by Team 144, but we're ready for Team 145 to take the reins. Really excited to be here in Lucas Oil Stadium, a place we look forward to to try to strive to end the regular season here. Unbelievably blessed to be here the last couple of years, and look forward to working our process to continue to do the same. We're here with three outstanding young men, leaders on and off the field: Makari Paige, safety; Max Bredeson, tight end fullback; and Donovan Edwards, running back. All three of these guys have made tremendous plays on the football field for us the past three years and look to do the same this year. But more importantly, elite people, elite students, and game changers off the field. Team 145 has really done a really good job up to this point in taking the necessary steps to be elite, to do all the things that we set out to do -- win the big games, beat our rivals, beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten, go to College Football Playoff and win it. For us, that's something we strive to do. Tough, smart, dependable, relentless, enthusiastic, and together is how I describe our team. We're going to do everything we can to strive for perfection. Everything we do every day is a process, and we'll continue to strive to do that. We'll continue to do that with contagious enthusiasm, unknown to mankind. Look forward to hearing the questions.
Q. I wanted to just ask you, obviously coming off a National Championship, you guys go from the hunters to being the hunted. How do you adjust that mentality now that you all are the hunted, to be able to achieve your goals and be able to go further during the season?
SHERRONE MOORE: For us, it's about getting better every day, and we're always hunting. Regardless of people are coming after us, we're coming after them. So for us, we're not in the mentality of sitting back and waiting to see what goes on. We're going to attack our process. We're going to work our tails off to make sure we're doing the best things we know that are possible in the way we know to be successful.
Q. Sherrone, an appropriate question for you, offensive line obviously a position of strength last year. You lose all five guys plus one. Yet this year's offensive line, a lot of high expectations. Curious to know what keeps you awake at night, what excites you the most, particularly at the tackle position?
SHERRONE MOORE: The thing that keeps me awake at night the most is my 4-year-old daughter kicking me in my back, but besides that, just making sure that our culture, that our alignment stays the same. Our players have done an outstanding job of keeping the culture, keeping the togetherness, the brotherhood, and really it's a testament to them. Bringing in the right staff was a huge piece for us. Bringing in the right people. Coach Newsome has done an unbelievable job mentoring and leading our offensive linemen, and all those players have really taken the reins. They've seen what it looks like, what it feels like, for us to practice that way, what it feels like up front. Being the head coach, obviously having the offensive line background, I'm going to take a lot of price in making sure that line is ready to go when we hit Game 1.
Q. I'm not going to ask you to name a quarterback, but I was wondering if you could tell me about Alex, Jack, and Davis, what makes them all viable options to be the starter come week 1?
SHERRONE MOORE: All those guys have all the attributes you need to be a successful starting quarterback at the University of Michigan and a lot of other universities. We're super blessed to have all those guys. Everybody has their own traits and their own things that make them a little different. I think the number one thing we're looking for out of any guy that is our starting quarterback is, one, that they're a playmaker, that they can make plays, that they'll make the right decision. They can take care of the football, and they want to win. They'll do anything for the team to win. Really we'll look for those attributes, and then we'll go from there.
Q. You hired Tony Alford away from Ohio State and then later Erin Dunston. Can you talk about that process and what they bring to you?
SHERRONE MOORE: Talk about two outstanding individuals, people, well-rounded, well-educated, well-trusted, people that -- you know, known Tony for a very long time and have a tremendous amount of respect for him and what he's done for the business. Erin, tremendous things about her. And just want great people in our program, great mentors of young men that are going to lead our players to a great place. So that was really the back end behind that. Excited to watch their work as we go through the future.
Q. From the outside looking in with the coaching changes and particularly on offense, this team looks vastly different than the one that won the national title. From where you sit, how closely does your team resemble a national title contender again?
SHERRONE MOORE: I think every year for us, our goal is to win that. We're not going to stray away from the goal of trying to win it all every year. When you're at Michigan, that should be your goal every single year. For our team, it will take shape in training camp, and then it will take shape in Game 1 and Game 2 to see where we're at. Feel very confident about our team. Very excited about our team. Every team is different. Team 142, 143, and 144, they're all different, so excited to see where 145 is.
Q. Talking about the quarterbacks, what is the timeline of trying to prepare for the season and naming a starter? Do you expect it to carry over into the season? And what is your ideal timeline when making that decision? SHERRONE MOORE: I think the ideal timeline is when we feel like we've got the guy that's going to help us win. There's not really a date. There's not really a time. We'll have a good feel as a staff. We've got really good coaches. Kirk Campbell is a phenomenal, phenomenal coach. He's going to do an outstanding job with our offense. I know he's going to make a great decision, and we'll be there to make it together.
Q. Obviously fresh off of national title season. Pretty much it's all your staff now. In regards to just how you approached developing your coaches, picking your coaches, was that more difficult compared to having to take over in the interim? And as one of the leading coaches and leading African American coaches in the country, what does it say to you in this conference knowing that most of the coaches in this conference that are African American have been leading the way?
SHERRONE MOORE: I think, as far as picking the coaches, it was a process that I really had to go through and take my time with it. Some happened a little faster than others. I feel like we got the right mix, right group of people to lead our program. Number one, they had to be great people, then great teachers, and people that cared about our student-athletes in a great way, and I feel like we got that with all our staff members. As far as our conference, again -- and I'd like to thank Warde Manuel, President Ono for the opportunity to be the head coach at Michigan. It's a humble blessing, first African American head coach at Michigan. It's a blessing. I think it's awesome. But it also shows that every young man, regardless of the color of your skin, wherever you're from, you can do whatever you want. Don't allow people to tell you that you can't do something. If you want to go do it, go take the opportunity and strive to be great.
Q. You've now made a change from offensive line coach and offensive coordinator to the head coach. What major adjustment are you making personally to keep the championship-caliber program where it's at?
SHERRONE MOORE: The number one thing I did is bringing the right staff, bringing the right people around our players. I've got to be a better delegator, and I think I've tried to do that as fast as I can. But for me, it's leaning on those mentors that I've had in the past, those people like Coach Harbaugh, talking to him, understanding how he built this program, and being blessed enough to be here for the last six years. It's been phenomenal for me. For me now, it's putting my own flavor on it, but not changing too much because obviously there's a lot of things that worked. Anything we can do to get better every single day, we're going to try to do.
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