Oregon Ducks coach Mark Helfrich: What he said at Pac-12 media day

A transcript of Oregon coach Mark Helfrich's comments during today's Pac-12 media day:

Q. Coach, how does it feel following someone who is considered such an offensive innovator, even having run the offense for them for a couple of seasons?

COACH HELFRICH: It's an honor to follow in Chip's footsteps. Oregon has been unique, looking back to [Rich] Brooks, [Mike] Bellotti, Chip Kelly following him and me following
Chip -- it's a unique thing in college football and the most important thing is all of our guys believe in our program and we don't look at it as someone replacing someone, we look at it as "the next guy up". And we were just talking this morning if the guy that followed John Wooden quoted him every once in a while would that have been a bad thing? We're going to talk the same, work the same, practice the same. We're going to tweak the margins; we have guys that grow up, get better. You have more wide-outs this year, tight ends this year. Those changes are going to happen and we'll adjust accordingly but we have a bunch of great guys that believe in what we do and that's the most important part.

Q. Coach, looking forward to the season. I know many are looking forward to increasing the passing game. I wonder if you could talk about your goals for the passing game and what receivers might be standing out?

COACH HELFRICH: We want to score. We don't care about the method. If Ifo has a picksix, I'm all for that. If we throw it or run it or kick return it, I don't care. We're going to take advantage of what the defense gives us and they can dictate to a certain extent how the run game goes and obviously the play action pass and we have had success with that during our tenure, comes out of that. But as far as ratio and numbers, this guy is the best quarterback in the country. But he doesn't care how many passing yards he has. He cares what it says before and after the hyphen in the team record, and that's how we operate.

Q. Coach, you have one of the most dynamic players in the country in De'Anthony Thomas. I think his only starts last year were in the slot. Is his role going to change? Will he start out of the backfield or will you use him any differently than he's been used in the past?

COACH HELFRICH: To be determined. That's the great answer, right -- it depends. De'Anthony [Thomas] likes that role, he likes to be a moving target that doesn't line up in one position all the time and certainly we like that, too. We have had that anchor for a long time. You go back to LaMichael [James] and other guys, and we need to find more numbers than just that one guy. That's a position where we don't have a ton of depth, but De'Anthony likes the role of wide-out, motion guy, movement guy and we like that, too, to keep him versatile against nickel defenses or whatever defense we happen to be playing against.

Q. Coach, when you were the offensive coordinator at Colorado, what were your career goals and what kind of a timeline did you give yourself?

COACH HELFRICH: I've never done either one of those things. I've never been a guy that said I want to do this by that age or this title by that stage or whatever. I've been lucky everywhere I've been working with and for great people, great places. Obviously, lucky and fortunate to be in the position I am right now and we're going to work every day to earn it.

Q. Coach, you mentioned following in Chip Kelly's footsteps. How different or similar do you think you've kept that path?

COACH HELFRICH: I think that's a great question for these two. They haven't spoken yet, but we haven't done much differently at all. I think from a player's perspective that's what you want. Chip is a great friend of mine and we will be for a long time and he's going to have success in the NFL, but we're different guys and we walk differently and talk differently and that's fine. We're going to tone what we have done from a program standpoint. How we recruit is a little bit different, but we're going to continue to be innovative, attack, and get better in every facet of our program every year.

Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/ducks/index.ssf/2013/07/oregon_ducks_coach_mark_helfri_3.html

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