Deciphering a Ron Zook Presser

gatorff at Zook Free Zone has brought my attention to this great post on the Illini forum at Scout.com. In it he discusses Ron Zook's press conference after the loss to Missouri:

Frankly, I find the guy hard to follow. I'm sure he knows what he means but I bet a lot of people listening to him are often lost.

Some examples:

"Number two, we may have defensively done a little bit too much. We may have tried some things to try to cataract our other formations and so forth that we didn't need to do. The third thing is that we have to listen to what people are saying and writing and we're going to get that corrected also."

Cataract? OK. Big deal. but "listen to what people are saying and writing"? Huh? What people? WTF?

"With the different formations and things like that we would have been better off just lying out and doing what we do and trying to check some things that we weren't ready to do."

I think I get it. D coverage would have been more effective if they kept it more basic. Ok, I think I get this now.....

"I felt like with the couple extra days we could do that and I think we could've done that but I think in a big game, it was obviously a big atmosphere which is what you want to be in, which you want to play in, and that's on me 100 percent. Tackling is about 99 percent of motion and a lot of times the guys that you try to tackle have a tendency to make you look bad number one...."

Nope. Lost me again, RZ.

On Cumberland being ready to play:

"No he won't. I think that's probably because of the doctors. Because if you ask him, he walked into the training room last night and he was dancing and I said 'Well, you ready to go?' and he said, 'Yeah, I'm ready,' but obviously he's going to be ready. He feels great. He was out there catching balls and telling jokes last night but obviously it's just a matter of the medical people deciding when he's ready to go. Your body is only going to heal so fast, but there's no pain, he can dance and walk and he will play. I think if the doctors will let him play, let him play, I think he plays next week but that's not my call."

Sooooooooooooooooo..... he won't play but he's ready to play and he feels great and he's able to dance and tell jokes. He won't play but "that's probably because of the doctors" What? "Probably"? Really? Huh?

On ST play:

"The first kickoff, you can't put the ball against him down the middle of the field and expect to do a good job of covering, I don't care if you have the Green Bay Packers covering for you."

I assume he's talking about Maclin?

On Judson's TD celebration:

"Oh absolutely I can put myself in his shoes. Those guys watching Sunday, every Sunday, he is caught up in the moment, it was his first touchdown, but that doesn't make it right. Those are the rules and it doesn't matter if we agree with them or not. I don't necessarily agree with 55mph every time either, but that's the law, so what are you going to do."

Again, ........... huh?

Just some of the examples. I think his mind works a heck of a lot faster than his mouth. I love Zook and more importantly so do recruits and players but there really is some odd disconnect between his thought and speech.

Actually, it's the opposite: His mouth runs much faster than his tiny brain.