The latest weekly installment of The Lloyd Carr Show on The Ticket 1050 WTKA (Ann Arbor), brought to weekly in a joint effort from WTKA and TheWolverine.com. This week, Carr talks about carrying momentum from the Illinois forward into Purdue week, the challenge Purdue poses to his team, the importance of the home crowd in this year’s contest, and much, much more.

Here is WTKA program director Jeff DeFran with Carr Friday:

DeFran: An impressive win over Illinois gave your team and your quarterback momentum:

Carr: “I think one of the things we’re always trying to do is improve. There’s always areas where you’re not where you want to be or need to be.

“I think for our sake, going into the Illinois game, we understood that Illinois was outmanned because of the loss at quarterback and had some injuries. Sometimes when you’re in that situation you let up; you don’t play aggressively with good concentration. I think the good thing about last week was we did play with good concentration. We played well as a team right from the beginning. We ran the football; we were good against the rush.

“But the thing I wasn’t happy with coming out of that game was we had too many penalties that killed some drives and kept some of their drives alive. There’s always something to work on and that’s what we’ve done this week.”

“Sometimes you have an opportunity as a coach to play every guy on the team. When you have that opportunity there’s nothing I enjoy more as a coach because there are a lot of guys that play football at Michigan without the benefit of a scholarship; they work hard on the demonstration teams.

“Ultimately when you get into a game like that you’re trying to build your depth because you understand, especially late in the season, you’re going to have some guys who are worn down, they’re banged up and they are not going to be able to play. It did give us the opportunity to give a number of valuable snaps to people in backup positions and that’s always a positive thing.”

“John Navarre had an opportunity to start four games as a redshirt freshman but Tom Brady, Brian Griese -- Scott Dreisbach was a different case -- but for the most part your backup quarterback doesn’t get as much work as Matt has gotten this year, and I think all of that is adding to what will be a good experience for his first year of eligibility.”

“Tim Bracken has come out of nowhere because as we went through fall practice and training camp, I did not feel that Tim was going to come back from where he had been; it had been a long time. He was not in particularly great condition.

“But he’s worked hard and in the last three or four weeks he’s made strides. He’s a guy that gives you change of pace from what Chris Perry does.”

“The truth of our situation, the reality is, if we want to win a championship, which we’re in the fight to do, we have to take every game … and if you don’t, there are so many lessons out there for a team that has looked past an opponent.

“With Purdue’s record and their standing in the polls, it’s obvious they are a very good football team and they have gotten all of our attention, I can assure you of that.”

“I like to throw the football; I think you have to be able to throw the football, but by the same token when you can’t run the football you generally have a hard time winning. You have to be able, more than anything else, to do both and then when you get to the game, depending on how you’re defended, you have to take what the defense gives you.

“You can’t try to run the football against nine-man fronts because if you do you’re going to have very little success. By the same token if you try to throw the football when you have a lot of guys back in coverage, that’s very difficult to do. If you have an ability to do both that’s what is going to help you win.”

“They’ve played as well defensively the last two years as anybody in this conference. It starts with nine returning starters. Their entire front four returns. Their linebackers – [Niko] Koutouvides and [Landon] Johnson -- I think are outstanding players. Three of four guys in the secondary are back. And their speed defensively and on special teams is better than any Purdue team I’ve played against.”

“I think [Craig] Terrill is a great defensive tackle -- someone that is very difficult to run against because he gets off blocks. He’s big, strong and powerful, and of course [Shaun] Phillips is a great pass rusher. You’ve got two legitimate all-American candidates. Terrill doesn’t get as much publicity as Phillips, but he is an outstanding football player.

“Purdue gives you a lot of different looks; they’re not a simple defensive football team. They’re going to give you a lot of differ blitzes, a lot of different looks where you think they’re coming and then they come out of it. And then they’ll come with a lot of zone blitzing and then mix in a lot of man coverage.

“Offensively, for your quarterback and your receivers, it’s not a game going in where you know you’re only going to get two or three coverages; you’re going to get a lot of different looks and that’s a problem.”

“I think when you mention the Wisconsin game, 14 of their points -- seven came off a punt return and the defense scored their other seven points – so you have to remember that Purdue is a very pateient offensive football team in comparison to recent years because they know they have a great defense.

“Orton has an outstanding job when you look at the number of passes he’s thrown and he’s thrown only two interceptions – that tells you he is taking care of the football.

“A year ago in that game he came in at the end of the game after Brandon Kirsch, a true freshman that started against us and hurt us with some plays where he ran on third down. As a matter of fact Kirsch was their leading rusher.

“One of our keys defensively is to not allow Purdue to run the football. If Purdue is successful against us running the football, it’s going to be a long day. Hopefully, we can get them into a lot of passing situations where we have an opportunity to make plays. If they can run the football then they keep you off balance and that’s when you have a problem on defense.”

“When I say predictable offense -- there are certain predictabilities in the personnel they use. For example, if they have five wide receivers with no backs and no tight ends, you have a pretty good idea that you have a quarterback you have to contend with. When you have two tight ends and two receivers, it’s much more predictable in terms of their runs.

“They’re a very difficult team to defend against because so much of their offense is at the line of scrimmage. They’re going to look at your defense and now the run is going to be predicated on how spread out you are. If you’re not spread out they’re going to throw. If you are spread out, and they have the linebackers spread a little bit further than they should be, then they’ve created running lanes. It’s an offense built on being able to run if the run is there and pass if the run isn’t there.”

“I’ve read quite a few comments from some of their players that Michigan is not as loud and not a difficult place to play. The challenge did not come from me, the challenge came from some of the people coming in here to play.”