Ole Miss Offensive News Conference

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR KENT AUSTIN

On QB Jevan Snead: "His best is still in front of him. Physically, he's big, he's strong, he's got a quick arm. He has a combination of a quick arm and a strong arm. He's accurate. He's tough. He's Texas tough. As a matter of fact, sometimes he's too tough. He won't slide when he runs. He won't run out of bounds. He's competitive. He's a team guy. He's unselfish. He just gets it. He knows how to win. He has won a lot of football games in the short period of time he has played for us. I think he has a great future ahead of him."

On how Snead reacts to adversity: "Jevan sometimes wears his emotions too much on his sleeve, especially when he makes a mistake. When he learns to forget the previous play and turn that switch off and get in the huddle and run the next play, he will see the impact on his performance on a more consistent basis. ... There is a lot of pressure on Jevan. There were a lot of high expectations."

On RB/WR Dexter McCluster: "Dexter is one of the most dynamic players in the country. We ask him to do quite a bit. Dexter is a guy that wears a lot of hats in our offense and plays a lot of positions. He has a very, very high football IQ. He is able to take things off the board right away and go out and implement them on the field. He's a very low-rep guy. Not many guys I've coached have that ability to understand conceptually what we're doing very quickly. That's why we're able to ask him to do a lot of things."

On WR Shay Hodge: "Shay has had a great year for us. It was an outstanding year. He was the only receiver in the SEC with over 1,000 yards. The thing Shay really did this year was that he stepped up and replaced some of the production that we lost with Mike Wallace's departure to the NFL."

On opposing defenses keying on Hodge: "Everybody knew - especially after we moved Dexter to tailback full time - that they had to stop Shay in the passing game. We had to do a good job in trying to move him around and continue to create opportunities for him. But Shay can play multiple positions in our passing game, and he rose to the occasion every week. He gave us the production we needed even though the defenses were keying on him throughout the year."

On OL Daverin Geralds: "He's a guy who was a converted defensive lineman. We turned him into a center our first year. He has done nothing but get better. He's very, very bright. He's a mathematics student. He makes all of the calls for us. He's very strong. He's one of the anchors of our offensive line."

On OL John Jerry: "He's one of the best linemen I've been around. We had Michael Oher last year. I think John is a guy who can play both inside and outside. As you saw this year, we moved him inside when we needed to get a little bit stronger against some pretty good fronts as the year went on. ... He's very big and extremely strong. He will be very impressive in the (NFL) combine. He has great feet for his size and has really worked hard this year to keep his weight down and to keep his quickness."

QB JEVAN SNEAD

On how the offensive rhythm has been maintained despite the long stretch since the final game of the regular season: "I think we've done great. In the past couple of practices we've had, we've done extremely well. Looking back at this time last year and the bowl practices we had at the Cotton Bowl, I think we're doing even better this year. ... Now, we're able to practice indoors without wind or any cold. That definitely helps to practice in that facility (Cowboys Stadium). I think we're doing great as a team. We still have our timing. Of course, we're trying to get better each and every day."

On playing a second consecutive AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic in his home state of Texas: "It's fun to be able to come back here and be so close to my friends and my family. My dad has actually been able to make our practices. I know he enjoys that. ... I'll have a lot of family and friends in the stands."

On his decision to transfer to Ole Miss from the University of Texas: "I knew they had decided that he (Colt McCoy) was their guy. I knew he was going to be a great quarterback. I don't have any hard feelings or anything like that. It was just a situation where there were two good quarterbacks at the same school. I wish him all the best. He has been doing extremely well since I left. I just knew it was going to be one or the other. It wasn't going to be both of us. He got the job, so I had to look elsewhere. ... I had always dreamed of being a starting quarterback in the NCAA, so I had to look elsewhere."

On what he remembers about the Oklahoma State football program while growing up: "I didn't watch a lot of them. I did follow the Big 12, and I do remember them always having a good team. ... They now have veterans on defense who have played together for a long time."

WR SHAY HODGE

On being in the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic for a second consecutive year: "Being back here again is awesome. When you add in the new stadium, it makes it even more fantastic. It's amazing. You walk in there and say, 'Whoa!'''

On the Rebels' 8-4 regular season: "It was disappointing in some respects. Maybe we weren't supposed to be rated so highly early. Maybe we were. In the end, it came out as a good thing to come back to the Cotton Bowl. Some of those bumps in the road were pretty horrible. But we fought back every time, and we made the best of it the next game. It's fair to say we were thinking BCS or national championship. But being here is still great."

On going up against Oklahoma State CB Perrish Cox: "He's going to line up against me a lot of times. They usually don't play a lot of man, so I don't know if he would go everywhere I go. But most of the time I will line up on him. It's going to be a great challenge. He knocks down a lot of passes and makes a lot of plays that most cornerbacks don't make."

On having a chance to impress the NFL scouts: "This is a measuring stick to show me how good I am. This guy (Cox) is rated high. I'll go the Senior Bowl also, so I will probably see him there."

OL DAVERIN GERALDS

On the improvement of the Ole Miss program during the past two years: "It is big for the university and for the Ole Miss family. Going to back-to-back January bowls is big."

On whether the AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic has a different feel from last year: "Like our coach said, it is pretty much a different bowl. It's a new experience for us with the new stadium and new trophy. It is bigger and better than ever."

On the Oklahoma State defense: "Oklahoma State is similar to a couple of the defenses we faced in the SEC this year, especially Auburn. They run a 4-3 front and are big up front. They are also well-coached."

On whether Ole Miss lived up to expectations in 2009: "It didn't go exactly as planned. We had some ups and downs that we had to overcome."

OL JOHN JERRY

On RB/WR Dexter McCluster: "Dexter makes us go. He gives us that mojo and makes us go. He's a tough guy. I'm not worried about Dexter getting hurt because he is tougher than what you think he is. ... Dexter and Shay (Hodge) make plays in practice every single day. It's easy to carry it over to the game. Coach always says that if you do it in practice, you will do it in the game."

On running the ball against the Oklahoma State defense: "It's going to be a tough challenge. We're going to have to come out and compete. They have a very, very good run defense. We're going to have to mix it up against those guys. ... Their front four plays very hard and is consistent in what they do."

On how the Ole Miss offensive line progressed during the season: "In the beginning, there were some guys who didn't really understand how to work. But they've hung in there all year long, and they're now doing what the coaches are asking them to do. There are some young guys, and they're going to be pretty good before they leave here. We started off a little slow, but we really got rolling later on in the year. Hopefully, we can keep that up."

On the transition to the offensive line after having been recruited as a defensive lineman coming out of high school: "It was a pretty easy transition. I just feel like I'm a ballplayer, and I just do whatever coach asks me to do. I don't mind playing whatever position they want me to play. One thing about it, you're going to hit every play. You have to have that mentality that you're going to hit somebody."

RB/WR DEXTER MCCLUSTER

On turning to religion after being involved in a July automobile accident: "I was looking at my phone, texting in the back seat. I heard one of my teammates yelling. I looked up. It was happening, but there was nothing I could do about it. ... The car caught fire and burned. ... I am trying to now use my platform as an Ole Miss football player to get young people to listen to me. After that, I skyrocketed. I am at peace all the time. It makes me feel better overall. I pray a lot. I read the Bible a lot now. I actually lead the prayer before every game. It became sort of a tradition this year. Before every meal, I say the blessing."

On what winning a second consecutive AT&T Cotton Bowl Classic would mean: "We need this win, and we want this win. Going out with a loss in the last game we had (against Mississippi State) left a bad feeling for all of us. When we went back and watched the film, we just saw that they came out and out-competed us in every area. We want to come back with a win."

On his expectations coming into the season: "I thought we were going to make it to the top. But overall this season has been great. Some people say it was a disappointing season, but it's not. We're at the Cotton Bowl, and we had some great wins against some great teams."

On how far the Ole Miss program has come in two years: "It's night and day really. Those first two years I was here, we couldn't buy a win. We had some hype coming into this season. But if you look at where we are now and compare it to where we were two years ago, it's night and day. There is no comparison. You have to give the coaching staff and these players credit. We had a lot of individuals (two seasons ago). We always had the talent, but we just didn't play as a team. We let go of the rope a lot those first two years. ... The character of this team now is that it's not over until that clock says 0:00."

On the younger players now at Ole Miss: "You watch them and you see that they're hungry. A lot them come to me and tell me that they watch me practice. They try to mimic me because it seems like I go full speed every play. I tell them that if you go full speed every play in practice, it will come easy during the game. We have some great athletes coming up. They're going to do some big things. We have some upperclassmen showing them the right way to do it."

The University of Mississippi Athletics

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