OPENING STATEMENT:
“UCLA week, they just came off a win beating Stanford on the road. As this time last year they got better, the quarterback is playing very well, they have some explosive players on offense. Defensively now, they seem like they have gotten that thing fixed, they have some athletes and that is one thing you realize when you play these guys. They have explosive players on offense, they run the ball a little bit better than people imagined, actually, the run the ball for about a hundred-sixty yards a game. They are very balanced on offense. They scored the one time against Washington State, that was unbelievable how many points both those teams scored. They are playing a lot of better, they play with a lot of energy and when you look at their record, they have the same conference record that we have, 2-2. They feel like they are starting to gain momentum and they have a young team, as well. A lot of young players play for those guys. This will be a good football game for us.”
ON IF BOUNCING BACK VERSUS UTAH FELLS DIFFERENT FROM BOUNCING BACK AGAINST COLORADO:
“Well, we haven’t played yet. I will tell you after the game. It was a big game for us in the fact that both teams had the same conference record, going on the road playing a very good opponent. As I said before we played this game, as we continue to build a program, we want to play in games like this because you learn a lot about yourself. I think we learned some lessons, the team understood it and we did not harp on it very long at all yesterday. They felt it, they were disappointed but we're not discouraged and they understood that we put ourselves in this position. Now how do we continue to win more games and put ourselves in position down the road, that is what you hope for and that is part of building a program. As far as the letdown, I do not want to get into that. I know one thing, we lost a game and now we want to try to win one.”
ON IF THE PHYSICALITY OF THE GAME IMPROVED DEFENSE'S CHANCES OF TURNOVERS:
“We had the mindset that this was going to be a game similar to Michigan St. and similar to Cal. That was the plan going in and low-and-behold and when you looked at the game, it was 14-3. Be quite honest, I felt comfortable. We get a score, it is a one-score game going into the fourth quarter. That is Cal, that is Michigan State and we can function this way. It never turned that way and they did a great job of not allowing that to happen. To their credit, that is the game. They never let us back in it. We had opportunities, we just could not find a way. Whereat Michigan St. and at Cal, we did. Going up there, this was not going to be a high-scoring affair, it was going to be a low-scoring ball game and the weather predicted it, too. A little bit of the weather played into it and if we can just keep it a low scoring game and survive the crowd and the noise. We did, it was 0-0 first quarter and then they score two times on us, it is 14-0. We are okay. We get out and kick a field goal, we are down and we said we had a chance to put any points on the board and it is a one-score game going into the fourth quarter. You feel like you have a shot because we have been in that before and that was the strategy. They made the plays, they did not allow us to make plays to get it to be a one-score game and good for them.”
ON WHETHER THE TEAM HAS EXTRA MOTIVATION PLAYING ANOTHER PROGRAM IN SIMILAR SITUATIONS:
“I respect Coach (Kelly). I've known coach for a while and talked to him at the coaches meetings, obviously. He is doing the same thing we are trying to do, trying to build a program and there is a process to it. Now, he has been in college football longer than I have as a head coach. When you respect guys like that, we always have conversations when we can and talk about where they are at. They are similar to where we are at, you look at it this way, the more you can win, it helps you recruit. That is the bottom line. We all know that as coaches and we are all recruiting the same guys. We are recruiting Arizona and California. That is our big hub for us. With UCLA, I know they recruit in California, I do not know if they are in Arizona but they probably are in Arizona as well. But you understand that and when you go to the games and you play against these guys, look at the sideline. Look at the kids and everyone kind of knows everybody and the kids are looking, they are measuring it, do I fit here? Both programs play a lot of young guys, I think they found themselves a quarterback who is healthy now and he is playing well for them. I would say, I think we have found a quarterback, right? From there you build it. Where we are at compared to them, you folks can decide all that. I do not get involved in that. I just try to continue to grow and build our program.”
ON WHAT JAYDEN DANIELS CAN LEARN AND HOW DID HE RESPONDED AFTER THE LOSS:
“He gets to be a freshman because that is what he is. I think the more success he had early, it is hard. Life is about how you recover and Jayden will be fine. We had a good talk after the game. We had a good talk yesterday, he is good. I said, hey, this is one of those deals. He whispered something into my ear on the sideline when the game was ending. It was between me and Jayen and I looked at him and said, I believe you, we left it at that. I just think it was one of those games where they made him uncomfortable early and it was hard. It was very hard against a really good defense, a team with a lot of experience. Knowing Jayden, he will put that into his memory bank. He will remember that. That is how he is going to grow. All quarterbacks go through that, all players go through that. Except when you play quarterback, you get exposed more because you play with the ball. If it is a left-tackle struggling, everybody is saying he is struggling, you can help him, you can chip over there, but it is not a big deal. But when it is the quarterback, it is like woah, what happened. He has had all these games where he has come back and he’s done all things and now he is Superman. No, he is a freshman quarterback and he gets to be a freshman quarterback, that is okay. We will live with that. I want him on my team, I am not going to trade him. I keep telling him, you are good. We will do this and he understands it, that is what I love about the kid because he took it all and he looked at it. As we were walking off the field, if you saw us, we were walking off the field together. ‘You good, I am good coach,’ I said alright, we will talk about it and we left it at that. We are going to move on.”
ON CONTROLLING TEAM'S EMOTION WHEN RETURNING TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:
“I will talk to him about. Anytime you go to L.A., you are going to have to talk to half of our football team. It is kind of like the USC game last year, tell them right now, get this ticket thing done. I do not want it to be Friday and you are running around the hotel and you need more tickets and all of that silliness. People want to come to the hotel but it is part of it, you can not stop it because they have these things. You can not get mad at them and say they are not focusing on the game because all these kids do it. They have been doing this their whole life and I am not one of those coaches who go: ‘No you can’t.” Whatever you have to do to get ready to play the game, you need to go do, as long as it’s legal. That’s my rule and that has always been my rule with them. Everyone does it differently but I just want them to get all the ticket stuff, all the family stuff, get that out of the way. When you go down there, go play. Yeah, they are going to be excited. You can’t tell them they should not be excited, I was excited when we went back to Cal. I was excited walking to the stadium. I grew up there, I was there as a kid. I saw many things that were the same. I telegraphed a couple of the guys. I saw guys in the stands that came to the stands before the game that were there when I was at Cal. I get it but then I have to go play a game. I don’t have to play but I coach the game. So I get all that, just be who you are. Don’t start taking things away from guys because you feel uncomfortable, they are comfortable and as long as their focused, that is all I care about. Everyone does it differently and you can’t make them all in a box and go: ‘You have to do this, you can’t smile, you can’t laugh,’ That was 30 years ago, life’s changed. I get that part, I really do. We will handle it how we handle it.”
ON WATCHING TEAM'S PENALTIES GOING INTO THIS WEEK:
“We got emotional at times. First of all, a couple of them when you look at football today, at all levels and they are trying to clean up football in this sense. The defenseless player can be defenseless on either side of the ball, okay. It can be a defensive player after a turnover, where you turn the ball over and the offense has the ball and all of a sudden a guy is going to block you. When you lead with the crown of the helmet and you launch and hit a guy, that is going to be a foul. When you hit a guy who’s defenseless, does not see it, that is a foul. We had a couple of them. Were they intentional? No because we don’t coach that and the players that were involved in them, they do not do that. The game sometimes puts you in a predicament where it is too late. Evan Fields, he is not a dirty player, he’s not a dirty player at all. He’s a tough guy but as soon as it happened, I said he’s done, he’s out. I get it, we had two guys out last year. He is in the locker room, he’s upset and he’s apologizing to me and I go, ‘Evan it’s good, I get it.’ He’s going that he let the team down. We will learn from all this. It was one of those games and I told you folks, I apologized to their coach (Kyle Whittingham) because this is not what we coach. No coach coaches that but it happens and it was an emotional game. We got emotional and in general, I say that I do not want an emotional team. I want a passionate team. The players understood exactly what I was saying. We addressed it after the game. I don’t anticipate that to happen again, I am saying that but it should not. But, it’s ball, man. Both teams knew it was going to be physical, it was physical out in the yard here last year and it was physical again up there. Both teams were kind of going at it and I get that part but it becomes a part where you have to leave it alone. They always catch the second guy, it never changes in football. They always catch the second guy. Sometimes the officials will tell you that you need to calm down. It comes out, what are you going to do. We don’t coach that and our team is not like that. I think you guys have watched us play enough football, that is a one-game deal and we don’t want to see that anymore.”
ON PLAYING PHYSICAL STYLE OF DEFENSE WHILE LIMITING PENALTIES:
“It is hard at every level and a lot of players struggle with it. You have to teach how to tackle. You also have to teach what to do with a guy who is defenseless. Even on offense if you get a turnover, you almost have to get in front of him and just shield him. There was a play in the game where Eno (Benjamin) broke out to the side and the quarterback turned his back to the guys who were coming to him. That is what you almost have to do now. When there is a defenseless guy running to go do something and he does not see the guy, you cannot hit that guy anymore. You have to shield him with your body. That is hard for anyone to do because it is just not natural for you to do because you have your helmet and pads and you want to hit a guy. You cannot do that because the guy is defenseless. It happens so fast sometimes that it can go from going to a guy and then you suddenly cannot stop yourself. That is ball. It is hard on the officials and it is hard on our players. We just have to get used to it. That is the game.”
ON STATE OF THE OFFENSIVE LINE MOVING FORWARD:
“The rotation when we used seven guys will probably continue to be quite honest. The young guys need a rest. They are wore out a little bit. We decided that with (Roy) Hemsley and Cody (Shear) back that we can rotate those guys in and get a bit of a rotation. We will continue to do that. I think it is good for the young guys. There was a spurt in the game when we ran the ball. We ran the ball for 100 yards. So, that was a good sign to see. If you remember last year, we rotated about five or six guys in there too. Roy rotated a little bit. Now, we have got seven guys so that is good.”
ON HOW RAIN AFFECTED JAYDEN DANIELS:
“For quarterbacks, this is when the big hand comes in when it is wet, so you can grip the ball. If you cannot grip the ball, then it is very difficult. It is harder probably in today's game because most of the quarterbacks do not get under center. All of a sudden now, you are catching a wet ball. We had a couple of snaps that went awry. I do not know if I ever had a comfortable game in the rain. As a defender, you kind of like the rain because it is very difficult for receivers to catch balls. On the other side, if it is not a turf field, then you have a problem being a defender because you are going to fall down. It works both ways. The worst for me was when I was in Minnesota when they used to play outside. I call them the real Vikings because they were not in the dome. They played outside. They had Fran Tarkenton and it was cold. The field was almost ice and I had to cover Ahmad Rashad. The story goes that he had little hands. Nate Wright comes over, who was a San Diego State guy and played for the Minnesota Vikings. Nate said he could not throw the ball because he could not grip the ball. I told the guys in the defensive meetings that Fran cannot throw the ball because he cannot grip it. After about the fifth pass in a row, the defensive lineman that was chasing Fran Tarkenton around hollered at me. Fran threw 52 passes and broke an NFL record. I looked over at the sideline and about after the tenth throw, I saw Nate Wright on the ground cracking up. I told myself you have got to be kidding me. I guess the cold does not matter if you are Fran Tarkenton because it was one of those days.”
ON ADJUSTMENTS MADE DURING GAME TO GET CREATIVE:
“Let me read this off to you, so you will know. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 14. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 17. 3rd and 6. 3rd and 7. 3rd and 10. 3rd and 22. 3rd and 12. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 7. Three-and-outs. What else do you want to know? We cannot be in third and long. We have to make positive yards on first down. When you do not do that against a good defense and when it is raining, you cannot play like that. To their credit, they got us in some bad downs. You cannot continue to drive like that. We had some spots where we thought we had moved it, but then a penalty or a bad snap would occur. It just kept happening. Those guys beat us. I am not an excuse giver. Whoever watched the game saw it. You cannot live that way. You just cannot offensively play behind the chains against a good defense. It will not happen. We played behind the chains all day. We cannot get anything going like that, we had six three-and-outs early. In the first half, we may have had two first downs. It was just bad football. We know that and we have to recover from that.”
ON ADJUSTING TO PLAYING AGAINST DIFFERENT STYLES OF OPPONENTS:
“Defensively, we always have to have the mindset that we want to play physical. That depends on who you are playing and what they like doing. UCLA runs the ball more than people can imagine. They come out sometimes with four tight ends. They do some unbalanced things, they do a lot of shifting and motioning, which is what I call eye-candy, which gets your eyes bad. They hike the ball often when you have a gap missing. You have to be ready for that. This is not a finesse offense. They run the football and the run it pretty good, they have some guys with some speed. So, you have to have the interior of the front seven be able to match up. They have to understand their gaps. If not, their back is a homerun hitter. If you watched him against Stanford, he (Joshua Kelly) hit a couple of big ones where Stanford was short a gap. You have to be ready for that because that can be a problem. Defensively, it always has to be that way. Offensively, the front will dictate what type of game it will be. They have some big guys inside. They have two big guys (Osa Odighizuwa and Antonio Mafi) inside and some athletic linebackers (Krys Barnes and Lokeni Toailoa) that can rush the quarterback on the edge, so we’ll have our hands full.”
ON IMPORTANCE OF RECRUITING HEADING INTO GAMES AGAINST CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS:
“When they watch you play, they are looking at guys that have either played against or played with because they are all connected. Everybody knows everybody. They look at the position that they play and they look at who is there. If you are a young player looking at our program, you probably have an opportunity to play. Is that helpful? Yes, it is. Eventually, as this thing goes, we do not want that to be the norm. We would want to be able to say, ‘you can actually redshirt your freshman year.’ Right now, we are in that mode. We want to be passed that in a year from now where we do not have to do that to all of these guys. We need to let them grow up, get in the weight room, and learn the system for a year. That is how you build a program. This class will help us do that. Hopefully, after that, I will not need to have these conversations about playing all of these young guys. If he is a good player, he will play. The best player is always going to play. That is my motto. But, they would not be so much ‘forced’ to play because that is all you have. It is not their fault. They want to play, but some of them are not ready to. When you play so many of them, the ones that do not play as much as the other ones say, ‘then, why am I not playing as much.’ You cannot play all of them. It is hard. That is the reality of it too. That is the other problem you have when you play so many, then guys start asking for more snaps. It is hard.”
ON PERFECT STORM HEADING INTO SALT LAKE CITY LAST WEEKEND:
“I think we played a team that was built for this moment. They have been building this team. There is a reason why they were picked to win the South. That was not even what we thought about it. They were a good football team and we had to go on the road to find out where we were at. If we gave ourselves a chance, then we would have an opportunity to win. We gave ourselves a chance. In the end, we just could not get it to a one-score game. If you get it to a one-score game, you are in the game and the momentum changes. We have done that in the past around here at numerous places. You have to give them the credit they deserve for not allowing us to do that.”
“UCLA week, they just came off a win beating Stanford on the road. As this time last year they got better, the quarterback is playing very well, they have some explosive players on offense. Defensively now, they seem like they have gotten that thing fixed, they have some athletes and that is one thing you realize when you play these guys. They have explosive players on offense, they run the ball a little bit better than people imagined, actually, the run the ball for about a hundred-sixty yards a game. They are very balanced on offense. They scored the one time against Washington State, that was unbelievable how many points both those teams scored. They are playing a lot of better, they play with a lot of energy and when you look at their record, they have the same conference record that we have, 2-2. They feel like they are starting to gain momentum and they have a young team, as well. A lot of young players play for those guys. This will be a good football game for us.”
ON IF BOUNCING BACK VERSUS UTAH FELLS DIFFERENT FROM BOUNCING BACK AGAINST COLORADO:
“Well, we haven’t played yet. I will tell you after the game. It was a big game for us in the fact that both teams had the same conference record, going on the road playing a very good opponent. As I said before we played this game, as we continue to build a program, we want to play in games like this because you learn a lot about yourself. I think we learned some lessons, the team understood it and we did not harp on it very long at all yesterday. They felt it, they were disappointed but we're not discouraged and they understood that we put ourselves in this position. Now how do we continue to win more games and put ourselves in position down the road, that is what you hope for and that is part of building a program. As far as the letdown, I do not want to get into that. I know one thing, we lost a game and now we want to try to win one.”
ON IF THE PHYSICALITY OF THE GAME IMPROVED DEFENSE'S CHANCES OF TURNOVERS:
“We had the mindset that this was going to be a game similar to Michigan St. and similar to Cal. That was the plan going in and low-and-behold and when you looked at the game, it was 14-3. Be quite honest, I felt comfortable. We get a score, it is a one-score game going into the fourth quarter. That is Cal, that is Michigan State and we can function this way. It never turned that way and they did a great job of not allowing that to happen. To their credit, that is the game. They never let us back in it. We had opportunities, we just could not find a way. Whereat Michigan St. and at Cal, we did. Going up there, this was not going to be a high-scoring affair, it was going to be a low-scoring ball game and the weather predicted it, too. A little bit of the weather played into it and if we can just keep it a low scoring game and survive the crowd and the noise. We did, it was 0-0 first quarter and then they score two times on us, it is 14-0. We are okay. We get out and kick a field goal, we are down and we said we had a chance to put any points on the board and it is a one-score game going into the fourth quarter. You feel like you have a shot because we have been in that before and that was the strategy. They made the plays, they did not allow us to make plays to get it to be a one-score game and good for them.”
ON WHETHER THE TEAM HAS EXTRA MOTIVATION PLAYING ANOTHER PROGRAM IN SIMILAR SITUATIONS:
“I respect Coach (Kelly). I've known coach for a while and talked to him at the coaches meetings, obviously. He is doing the same thing we are trying to do, trying to build a program and there is a process to it. Now, he has been in college football longer than I have as a head coach. When you respect guys like that, we always have conversations when we can and talk about where they are at. They are similar to where we are at, you look at it this way, the more you can win, it helps you recruit. That is the bottom line. We all know that as coaches and we are all recruiting the same guys. We are recruiting Arizona and California. That is our big hub for us. With UCLA, I know they recruit in California, I do not know if they are in Arizona but they probably are in Arizona as well. But you understand that and when you go to the games and you play against these guys, look at the sideline. Look at the kids and everyone kind of knows everybody and the kids are looking, they are measuring it, do I fit here? Both programs play a lot of young guys, I think they found themselves a quarterback who is healthy now and he is playing well for them. I would say, I think we have found a quarterback, right? From there you build it. Where we are at compared to them, you folks can decide all that. I do not get involved in that. I just try to continue to grow and build our program.”
ON WHAT JAYDEN DANIELS CAN LEARN AND HOW DID HE RESPONDED AFTER THE LOSS:
“He gets to be a freshman because that is what he is. I think the more success he had early, it is hard. Life is about how you recover and Jayden will be fine. We had a good talk after the game. We had a good talk yesterday, he is good. I said, hey, this is one of those deals. He whispered something into my ear on the sideline when the game was ending. It was between me and Jayen and I looked at him and said, I believe you, we left it at that. I just think it was one of those games where they made him uncomfortable early and it was hard. It was very hard against a really good defense, a team with a lot of experience. Knowing Jayden, he will put that into his memory bank. He will remember that. That is how he is going to grow. All quarterbacks go through that, all players go through that. Except when you play quarterback, you get exposed more because you play with the ball. If it is a left-tackle struggling, everybody is saying he is struggling, you can help him, you can chip over there, but it is not a big deal. But when it is the quarterback, it is like woah, what happened. He has had all these games where he has come back and he’s done all things and now he is Superman. No, he is a freshman quarterback and he gets to be a freshman quarterback, that is okay. We will live with that. I want him on my team, I am not going to trade him. I keep telling him, you are good. We will do this and he understands it, that is what I love about the kid because he took it all and he looked at it. As we were walking off the field, if you saw us, we were walking off the field together. ‘You good, I am good coach,’ I said alright, we will talk about it and we left it at that. We are going to move on.”
ON CONTROLLING TEAM'S EMOTION WHEN RETURNING TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:
“I will talk to him about. Anytime you go to L.A., you are going to have to talk to half of our football team. It is kind of like the USC game last year, tell them right now, get this ticket thing done. I do not want it to be Friday and you are running around the hotel and you need more tickets and all of that silliness. People want to come to the hotel but it is part of it, you can not stop it because they have these things. You can not get mad at them and say they are not focusing on the game because all these kids do it. They have been doing this their whole life and I am not one of those coaches who go: ‘No you can’t.” Whatever you have to do to get ready to play the game, you need to go do, as long as it’s legal. That’s my rule and that has always been my rule with them. Everyone does it differently but I just want them to get all the ticket stuff, all the family stuff, get that out of the way. When you go down there, go play. Yeah, they are going to be excited. You can’t tell them they should not be excited, I was excited when we went back to Cal. I was excited walking to the stadium. I grew up there, I was there as a kid. I saw many things that were the same. I telegraphed a couple of the guys. I saw guys in the stands that came to the stands before the game that were there when I was at Cal. I get it but then I have to go play a game. I don’t have to play but I coach the game. So I get all that, just be who you are. Don’t start taking things away from guys because you feel uncomfortable, they are comfortable and as long as their focused, that is all I care about. Everyone does it differently and you can’t make them all in a box and go: ‘You have to do this, you can’t smile, you can’t laugh,’ That was 30 years ago, life’s changed. I get that part, I really do. We will handle it how we handle it.”
ON WATCHING TEAM'S PENALTIES GOING INTO THIS WEEK:
“We got emotional at times. First of all, a couple of them when you look at football today, at all levels and they are trying to clean up football in this sense. The defenseless player can be defenseless on either side of the ball, okay. It can be a defensive player after a turnover, where you turn the ball over and the offense has the ball and all of a sudden a guy is going to block you. When you lead with the crown of the helmet and you launch and hit a guy, that is going to be a foul. When you hit a guy who’s defenseless, does not see it, that is a foul. We had a couple of them. Were they intentional? No because we don’t coach that and the players that were involved in them, they do not do that. The game sometimes puts you in a predicament where it is too late. Evan Fields, he is not a dirty player, he’s not a dirty player at all. He’s a tough guy but as soon as it happened, I said he’s done, he’s out. I get it, we had two guys out last year. He is in the locker room, he’s upset and he’s apologizing to me and I go, ‘Evan it’s good, I get it.’ He’s going that he let the team down. We will learn from all this. It was one of those games and I told you folks, I apologized to their coach (Kyle Whittingham) because this is not what we coach. No coach coaches that but it happens and it was an emotional game. We got emotional and in general, I say that I do not want an emotional team. I want a passionate team. The players understood exactly what I was saying. We addressed it after the game. I don’t anticipate that to happen again, I am saying that but it should not. But, it’s ball, man. Both teams knew it was going to be physical, it was physical out in the yard here last year and it was physical again up there. Both teams were kind of going at it and I get that part but it becomes a part where you have to leave it alone. They always catch the second guy, it never changes in football. They always catch the second guy. Sometimes the officials will tell you that you need to calm down. It comes out, what are you going to do. We don’t coach that and our team is not like that. I think you guys have watched us play enough football, that is a one-game deal and we don’t want to see that anymore.”
ON PLAYING PHYSICAL STYLE OF DEFENSE WHILE LIMITING PENALTIES:
“It is hard at every level and a lot of players struggle with it. You have to teach how to tackle. You also have to teach what to do with a guy who is defenseless. Even on offense if you get a turnover, you almost have to get in front of him and just shield him. There was a play in the game where Eno (Benjamin) broke out to the side and the quarterback turned his back to the guys who were coming to him. That is what you almost have to do now. When there is a defenseless guy running to go do something and he does not see the guy, you cannot hit that guy anymore. You have to shield him with your body. That is hard for anyone to do because it is just not natural for you to do because you have your helmet and pads and you want to hit a guy. You cannot do that because the guy is defenseless. It happens so fast sometimes that it can go from going to a guy and then you suddenly cannot stop yourself. That is ball. It is hard on the officials and it is hard on our players. We just have to get used to it. That is the game.”
ON STATE OF THE OFFENSIVE LINE MOVING FORWARD:
“The rotation when we used seven guys will probably continue to be quite honest. The young guys need a rest. They are wore out a little bit. We decided that with (Roy) Hemsley and Cody (Shear) back that we can rotate those guys in and get a bit of a rotation. We will continue to do that. I think it is good for the young guys. There was a spurt in the game when we ran the ball. We ran the ball for 100 yards. So, that was a good sign to see. If you remember last year, we rotated about five or six guys in there too. Roy rotated a little bit. Now, we have got seven guys so that is good.”
ON HOW RAIN AFFECTED JAYDEN DANIELS:
“For quarterbacks, this is when the big hand comes in when it is wet, so you can grip the ball. If you cannot grip the ball, then it is very difficult. It is harder probably in today's game because most of the quarterbacks do not get under center. All of a sudden now, you are catching a wet ball. We had a couple of snaps that went awry. I do not know if I ever had a comfortable game in the rain. As a defender, you kind of like the rain because it is very difficult for receivers to catch balls. On the other side, if it is not a turf field, then you have a problem being a defender because you are going to fall down. It works both ways. The worst for me was when I was in Minnesota when they used to play outside. I call them the real Vikings because they were not in the dome. They played outside. They had Fran Tarkenton and it was cold. The field was almost ice and I had to cover Ahmad Rashad. The story goes that he had little hands. Nate Wright comes over, who was a San Diego State guy and played for the Minnesota Vikings. Nate said he could not throw the ball because he could not grip the ball. I told the guys in the defensive meetings that Fran cannot throw the ball because he cannot grip it. After about the fifth pass in a row, the defensive lineman that was chasing Fran Tarkenton around hollered at me. Fran threw 52 passes and broke an NFL record. I looked over at the sideline and about after the tenth throw, I saw Nate Wright on the ground cracking up. I told myself you have got to be kidding me. I guess the cold does not matter if you are Fran Tarkenton because it was one of those days.”
ON ADJUSTMENTS MADE DURING GAME TO GET CREATIVE:
“Let me read this off to you, so you will know. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 14. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 17. 3rd and 6. 3rd and 7. 3rd and 10. 3rd and 22. 3rd and 12. 3rd and 8. 3rd and 7. Three-and-outs. What else do you want to know? We cannot be in third and long. We have to make positive yards on first down. When you do not do that against a good defense and when it is raining, you cannot play like that. To their credit, they got us in some bad downs. You cannot continue to drive like that. We had some spots where we thought we had moved it, but then a penalty or a bad snap would occur. It just kept happening. Those guys beat us. I am not an excuse giver. Whoever watched the game saw it. You cannot live that way. You just cannot offensively play behind the chains against a good defense. It will not happen. We played behind the chains all day. We cannot get anything going like that, we had six three-and-outs early. In the first half, we may have had two first downs. It was just bad football. We know that and we have to recover from that.”
ON ADJUSTING TO PLAYING AGAINST DIFFERENT STYLES OF OPPONENTS:
“Defensively, we always have to have the mindset that we want to play physical. That depends on who you are playing and what they like doing. UCLA runs the ball more than people can imagine. They come out sometimes with four tight ends. They do some unbalanced things, they do a lot of shifting and motioning, which is what I call eye-candy, which gets your eyes bad. They hike the ball often when you have a gap missing. You have to be ready for that. This is not a finesse offense. They run the football and the run it pretty good, they have some guys with some speed. So, you have to have the interior of the front seven be able to match up. They have to understand their gaps. If not, their back is a homerun hitter. If you watched him against Stanford, he (Joshua Kelly) hit a couple of big ones where Stanford was short a gap. You have to be ready for that because that can be a problem. Defensively, it always has to be that way. Offensively, the front will dictate what type of game it will be. They have some big guys inside. They have two big guys (Osa Odighizuwa and Antonio Mafi) inside and some athletic linebackers (Krys Barnes and Lokeni Toailoa) that can rush the quarterback on the edge, so we’ll have our hands full.”
ON IMPORTANCE OF RECRUITING HEADING INTO GAMES AGAINST CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS:
“When they watch you play, they are looking at guys that have either played against or played with because they are all connected. Everybody knows everybody. They look at the position that they play and they look at who is there. If you are a young player looking at our program, you probably have an opportunity to play. Is that helpful? Yes, it is. Eventually, as this thing goes, we do not want that to be the norm. We would want to be able to say, ‘you can actually redshirt your freshman year.’ Right now, we are in that mode. We want to be passed that in a year from now where we do not have to do that to all of these guys. We need to let them grow up, get in the weight room, and learn the system for a year. That is how you build a program. This class will help us do that. Hopefully, after that, I will not need to have these conversations about playing all of these young guys. If he is a good player, he will play. The best player is always going to play. That is my motto. But, they would not be so much ‘forced’ to play because that is all you have. It is not their fault. They want to play, but some of them are not ready to. When you play so many of them, the ones that do not play as much as the other ones say, ‘then, why am I not playing as much.’ You cannot play all of them. It is hard. That is the reality of it too. That is the other problem you have when you play so many, then guys start asking for more snaps. It is hard.”
ON PERFECT STORM HEADING INTO SALT LAKE CITY LAST WEEKEND:
“I think we played a team that was built for this moment. They have been building this team. There is a reason why they were picked to win the South. That was not even what we thought about it. They were a good football team and we had to go on the road to find out where we were at. If we gave ourselves a chance, then we would have an opportunity to win. We gave ourselves a chance. In the end, we just could not get it to a one-score game. If you get it to a one-score game, you are in the game and the momentum changes. We have done that in the past around here at numerous places. You have to give them the credit they deserve for not allowing us to do that.”