OPENING STATEMENT...
“We have a very good opponent we are about to play. They have won four games. They have a really good offense, they have some good players – quarterback is a seasoned guy. They have a wide receiver similar to N’Keal (Harry). They get him the ball a lot, they are averaging about 40 points a game. Defense is playing well, they are giving up about 18. They score in all quarters, they score a bunch of points. There a fast offense, they have a running game also, they rush it for about 200 yards. They are a well-coached football team. Coach (Mike) MacIntyre has done a nice job up there now, I think in his sixth season. I remember when he was at San Jose State and went up there and took over. They have got a nice program that has played well the last four weeks. Very confident and very solid football team so we have our work cut out.”
ON HANDLING EMOTIONS IN ROAD GAMES…
“Emotions are emotions in how you handle them. They have had those emotions their whole life. You have got to come to grips with them, especially as a unit. I just think there are going to be some negative plays. That’s football, there is always negative plays and how you react to those things is going to have a lot to do with the proceeding plays that follow that. I think we got into a second quarter last week that wasn’t very good – made some errors and they made some plays as well but didn’t handle them very well. And then I thought we got out of it in the third quarter somewhat and in the fourth quarter did a pretty good job holding them to only seven points. The emotions of a football game are up and down and how you handle it in the huddle is very important. What guys in the huddle will get those guys regrouped because the coaches can’t do it when they are playing, you can do it on the sidelines. That is something, at times we struggle with. Not long series of times but you can’t let that affect how you play.”
ON GETTING PLAYERS READY FOR HIGHER ELEVATION…
“I don’t talk about it. I have never talked about it. Let’s just go play football, nothing different. We are going to play football, that’s how it’s always been. I have played up there numerous times. I have coached teams up there and it never was an issue. Everybody else makes it an issue. I think Camp T is pretty elevated. Make it an issue if you talk about it, we don’t talk about. Going to play the Buffaloes, there 4-0.”
ON ENO BENJAMIN’S PERFORMANCE…
“It was magnificent when you think about what he accomplished. Some of the rewards that he is receiving this week rightly deserved. I thought when you watched the tape, he did a great job of really making yards once he was hit. I mean, he was hit a couple times, everything wasn’t clean. He made yards after contact and that’s what good backs do. Tremendous balance. He just ran at a different level. He broke tackles. Now, the offensive line blocked well, they had the whole thing going. It was fun to watch when you sit over there defensively. As a head coach, every time we run it we are making five yards. Why stop running it, just keep running it. All the sudden before you know it you are running it almost 50 times. When you are running that well and it helps you when you struggle some and they got some momentum. It was very important that we ran the ball so our defense could collect itself. There comes a point in the game and for us, it was about the third quarter that it was managing the clock again. It was looking at the clock and I’m telling Manny (Wilkins) and those guys its times to melt the clock, just don’t snap it tell five seconds – were not in a hurry. We’re going to run the ball and we're going to take some shots down the field every once in a while, but our intentions were to continue to run the ball and play the clock. We got a three-score lead - play the clock. That is what you do. Just to keep scoring and scoring, let’s get out of here. Let the clock run down and that’s kind of our mindset. I think that players know me by now in situations they know what I am going to ask them. Coach (Rob) Likens asked on one of the series, ‘Can I throw it deep?’ I said, ‘Not on the first play you can’t throw it deep. No run the ball.’ I said, ‘when you cross the 50 I will let you throw another pass, but right now let’s just run the ball and let's manage the clock.’ It’s not about the opponent so much, it’s really about the clock now. How do we manage it? How do we take it down? Offensively every time when we make a first down, its three minutes off the clock. Let’s get the game going, we don’t want to make this a five-hour game, I want to go home.”
ON OTHER FACTORS THAT HELP WITH SUCCESS ON THE ROAD…
“Just the mentality of it. I think I have always enjoyed going on the road with teams and even as a player. You just feel like no one is there but you. There is going to be some fans that they let in, they're not going to have good seats and you can’t hardly hear them but they are there. I just think, you have that mentality when you go on the road, that it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be loud. I have always said this, especially to the offensive coordinators, ‘Hey call whatever you want, you won’t get booed you are on the road.’ They don’t boo you on the road. They don’t care what you call. They don’t care if you go three and out three times in a row, nobody boo’s you. At home, what are they doing? On the road, nobody cares. The fans like clapping, they don’t really watch you, they just kind of watch their team. That’s the mentality I have always taken on the road. It’s a fun environment. The fans are in an uproar and you know it. Emotions of the crowd it takes on the personality of the team that is playing. If there team is really going, the crowd gets all anchored up. If their team kind of settles down – you saw it in this game. When they scored on us, all of the sudden the crowd got kind of quiet at home because they were like, ‘uh oh. What’s going on here?’ But that’s the fun of it, that’s football. I mean, you understand that. I sensed it, I went ‘Okay, here we go we better get going and get our crowd back in the game.’ It puts an onus on you, the home team because when the crowd loses its luster and there energy because some things bad are happening, you have got to get them cranked back up. That’s part of it. I guess that’s how I have looked at it anyway.”
ON IF SUCCESSFUL RUSHING GAME HURTS PASSING GAME…
“It can, but here again the object is to win the game. It’s not about stats. It’s never been about stats for me, its win. How do you win? If you have a formula that is winning and you control the game, why would you get away from that? That’s kind of how it works. It’s almost like, offensively they have this smorgasbord of plays - offensive coordinators. If you ever look at their list, it’s like wow you can order from every restaurant in Arizona because they have all kinds of plays. I have always said this, as they are calling the plays and I have the chart too and I am watching and I go, ‘you know the play you ran four plays ago. Yeah, coach.’ I said, ‘that was really a good play, you can actually run that again.’ You don’t have to order everything on the menu, just run the plays that work - make them stop it. It’s amazing sometimes football is this game of have they stopped it yet – no, then why did we stop running it? Because of what? Because you have some other plays? Just keep running that one and it kind of works and if you do that you will be surprised at what happens.”
ON MOST CONSISTENT PLAYERS OFFENSIVELY AND DEFENSIVELY…
“I don’t do that. I don’t get into praising players, that’s you folks. You watch them, I don’t get into that. The award for Eno (Benjamin) is well deserved, the offensive line is a part of that. I don’t get into calling players out, whether they play well or not well, that’s not my job. I tell them personally. There are too many emotions when we get into that. Why didn’t you mention me coach? Just play good and win and everybody gets credit, right. That’s what happens. That’s how I look at it.”
ON THOUGHTS OF OFFENSIVE LINE PERFORMANCE…
“We have got a collection of about seven guys that can rotate and coach (Dave) Christensen has done a fabulous job with those guys. Linemen are a really tight bunch. There the smartest collectively as a group on any football team. If you go in the room and watch how they operate, they are just a different group and I know that because when I first got into pro football as a scout, I sat in the offensive line room to learn how to evaluate offensive linemen and what it took to play in the league. You have been around a lot of guys and been around a lot of great offensive line coaches as well. They are a funny group and they stick together. They have their own little rituals in how they do things - where they sit. They have a fine schedule in pro football these things that they do together. I think they all understand that the only way the offense can function is them playing well and it starts with the run game. Everything feeds off of the run game and then passing lanes open up. It forces people to play eight guys in the box and now you get some one-on-one coverage outside and we have some good receivers we can throw them the football and that kind of happened in this game. You get into games where they play certain coverages and all of the sudden you keep running it and you come back to keep running it, eventually the coordinator sitting over there says look, ‘I can't keep playing soft shells, I have to add a guy in the box.’ You add a guy in the box, then the pass opens up. That’s how it works and for those guys running the power, counter and running some zone, we have what we want to run now. We know what we are going to run. How we change it around every week – that’s the beauty of it. It’s going to be were going to run the football. I said that when I first got here. You have to run the ball and the first game or so we ran it okay, but we had a lot of big explosion plays. I think the last couple weeks you kind have seen what we’re going to become. Not just now, but as long as I sit in this seat. Where ever I have been we have had running backs. We are going to run the ball. When I was in New York I had Curtis Martin who led the league in rushing – he won the rushing title. When I was in Kansas City I was fortunate enough to have Larry Johnson who won the rushing title. It’s not by accident. I grew up in an era where running the football was important so I just feel that when you run the ball there is some toughness about you. It travels well along with defense. It just does because it doesn’t take a whole lot to turn around and give it to the guy. It’s really hard to mess that one up – just turn around and just give it to him, say here – go. The ball is not heavy. The guy can carry it and if we can block them then the guys are going to run. From there, everything else opens up so that’s my philosophy, that’s what I believe in. Maybe cause of the coaches that I have been under my career as a player and as an assistant coach. I came into the league with Dick Vermeil. We ran the ball in Philadelphia. I worked for Marty (Schottenheimer) and Marty had all those big backs – Christian Okoye, Barry Ward, we had all those guys, then we ended up getting Marcus Allen. We had Joe Montana and we still ran the ball. We had Joe Legend. In Tampa (Bay) with Tony (Dungy), we had (Mike) Alstott and Warrick Dunn. We ran the football. In New York, I was fortunate enough to have a great back - really good offensive line. We ran it the same way in Kansas City. I just like running, it is fun to watch when you knock people down. Some people don’t like it because it’s boring, you want to see the ball fly in the air and I get it. Throw it in the air every once in a while but run it and see what happens.”
ON INJURY REPORT FOR CASEY TUCKER AND DAS TAUTALATASI…
“We're hoping so. They will get some practice time this week and obviously get to play. That’s another thing, we have had some guys go down and there have been some guys – (Kyle) Soelle had to play a lot last week and good for him. At the offensive line as well. That thing has been moving around every week it seems like. We have different guys and that’s a credit to Dave (Christensen). He has done a really good job with those guys.”
ON PARITY IN PAC-12 SOUTH...
“It is a conference in which it’s back and forth. Colorado is now 4-0 and they are playing well. USC has found their way back. Every game is important when you get into our conference schedule and we are in the south. We realize that this is an opponent who is a good football team and we have to go on the road and play them. It’s an important game because it is a conference game and it is also a game within the South division. It is unique. Sitting from afar watching this conference because I am a west coast guy and even though I was in Bristol, I always kept up with the west coast teams, it is unique conference because you just never know what will happen. Like I said, there has been four teams that have been pretty consistent over the past three years. We know who they are and we talk about how many games they win each year. They seem to always find their way in the conference when things start heating up. It is going to be fun for me going through this. I will find out a lot about the conference and the players. I am not familiar with the teams as much. I watched from afar, but now I will set and study film. I will watch the players and understand the personnel of the coaches. That takes a while because I have not played these guys. I’ll know all the personnel and the kids they are receipting in a couple years from now. That has something to do with it as well. That helps you when you’re in a conference. For example, when you’re in a division in the NFL it helps you. When I was in the NFC East and I coached in different conferences, I realized that I have to build to play in my division and study who is in my conference. That’s how you go out and recruit. Well, that’s how you draft people. You know who the coaches are, you know who the assistant coaches are and you know the systems. Well, I am still learning this. This is my first run through the conference, but I'm pretty good at studying quickly. I will study it and do my homework when the season is over and know more about the conference, players, and coaches. As far as recruiting, a lot of us are recruiting the same players and that is interesting as well. It is fun because I am learning something every time I play a game in this conference and every time I work as a coach. For the players I recruited, it is how they process information.”
ON INEXPERIENCE OF THE CONFERENCE GRIND…
“You film study it, but when you know other peoples’ personnel and you film study them, that is a big factor because you kind of know who they are. You set up your whole plan on playing those teams. It is like in the NFL if we’re playing Buffalo. We have to think about what they do schematically and how we are going to attack them. People are looking at us and wondering, ‘are they are a similar team? Are they a run team? What are they like on defense?’ When you’re the new coach, you are trying to learn them, but they are also trying to learn you. They might be thinking of how he coaches. When the game starts, how does he coach the game?’ Coach (Mike) MacIntyre likes to go fast every once in a while. They are going to go fast and I get that. I see that on tape and I have watched that on tape. We will see what we will be able to do to stop that. Offensively, how will we be able to help our defense? But, you do not know until you play them and then you get a good feel and then you learn.”
ON STATUS OF CEEJAY FRENCH-LOVE...
“We are going to redshirt him.”
ON HOW TO APPROACH TELLING PLAYERS ABOUT ROAD GAMES…
“I think they have heard it enough. I hope I will not have to remind them. But, it is a conference opponent and that is more important than anything. It just happens to be on the road but, it is something we are going to have to improve on. If we are going to win games and win the PAC-12 Championship, then you will have to go on the road and play. You do not get to play them all at home. We also have to build our mentality up to know that we have to win road games. We always have felt if we win a road game in our division, then that is a game and a half because we beat them on the road. We have got to start winning on the road. It is important.”
ON DEALING WITH COLORADO WITH SIMILAR RECEIVER TO N’KEAL HARRY…
“I am not going to give you the game plan, but we are going to know where he lines up. I know he is number two (Laviska Shenault Jr.). He is big, strong, and physical. They move him all over the place on bubbles and routes like that. He runs inside in the slot. He caught a big pass against UCLA for 50-something yards. They were in casino blitz, which means there is no free safety and no help. That resulted in a touchdown right down the middle. So, he is a very good player. He plays with a lot of energy too. I like the way he plays. He is big at about 6-3 220 or something like that. He is hard to tackle and he is a really good football player.”
ON MENTALITY OF MILKING THE CLOCK SIMILAR TO NFL…
“Yeah because most coordinators want to score. You worry about college games because you always feel like you cannot score enough because people spread you out and they throw it so much and you feel like you have got to score more points. That is the mentality somewhat, but more important to me than anything is how you win a game. If you have to throw it 50 times, then throw it 50 times if they allow you to do it. But, when you can run the ball, you control the game. I do know that. You flat control the game because that other team has to wait until you give them the ball back. If you can run it constantly and then throw a pass or two and hit some like we did in our past game, it puts the burden on them because they have to get out of their game plan. We have just forced them to do something they might not want to do on the road and start throwing it. For example, if we keep running this ball, they will not get their 17 possessions. They are only going to get 11 because we were taking six minutes off this clock every time we got the ball. If you look at the second half, that was my intention for them to not get the ball back a whole lot. They got the ball back a little bit because our defense was a little shaky there and I had to allow them to calm down. I just needed our offense to help us out a little bit for now by keeping our defense off the field. I wanted them to score, but I wanted to take the clock down. If you saw Manny (Wilkins), he wouldn’t hike the ball until that clock went down to three. All I looked at was the forty-second clock and if we make a first down, then I will be very happy because that would be another three minutes off the clock if we just keep doing that. That is just my mentality as a coach. I have been around a lot of really good coaches and hopefully, I have learned some things from them. There comes a point in the game in which you have to play the clock. Sometimes when you are struggling in certain areas, if you can run the ball that kind of calmed everybody down and I can coach on the sideline to get everybody ready. I have seen it in games in which someone gets a score and the other teams throw three straight passes because they feel nervous, 15 seconds went off the clock, and they punt. That’s what I call bad football. You would be playing right into the hands of the opponent and I am not going to let that happen. We are not going down that road. We are not going to take three passes and take 15 seconds off the clock. We cannot do that. Football is complementary because the three components have to help each other. You have to watch the game with your eyes and find out where we are struggling. It is important to be able to think how you can help certain guys. I thought the critical play was at the end of the fourth quarter when we made a stop at the five-yard line. If they score, it would become a one-score game. We went 94 yards in six minutes and we score. Momentum had changed as were in the fourth quarter saying to ourselves, ‘we are good now.’ That’s my job as the head coach. I have to make those decisions and be on the headset.”
ON HOW COACH (ROB) LIKENS LEAVING IMPRINT ON OFFENSE…
“If you could just hear what happens on the headphones. He is an emotional guy and I love him. Every offensive coordinator thinks every play is supposed to work. They just do. They just think there is no one out there. Yeah, there is a defense out there and they do not always work. So, he gets emotionally going and every once in a while I have to calm him down. That poor desk up there is getting beat up because I hear it when he hits that desk. He also gets mad at a few players and I have to tell him to cut the player some slack because this is our best player. It is almost like he has a tantrum for like five seconds. He lets it go and he lets it out. One time, I was calling for him and Nate told me he took his headphones off and he was in the back pounding the wall. I told him to come back and he was good. But, he has done a good job. It is hard to be a coordinator when you have so many players you think should get to touch the ball. How would you go about that? We have to get 1 (N’Keal Harry) the ball. Everybody knows that. But, then Eno (Benjamin) is running. So, how does that work? It is hard. He has a lot of gifted players and they have to touch the ball. It is hard being an offensive coordinator.”
ON HOW THE DEFENSE LINE IS PERFORMING IN RUN DEFENSE…
“When we have it in control, I think our gap responsibilities are sound because we move so much, our line doesn’t sit still. It’s always moving, twisting, and stunting. When we miss the wrong gap and the safety is supposed to be in the B gap for example and there is all of a sudden two guys in the B gap and he hits through the A, we have got a problem. It has happened almost every week in which we get a little bit out of whack in our responsibilities. We had enough guys in the box, but we didn’t contain it a couple of times when they got on the edge. We wrong shouldered the play. You have to leave your outside shoulder free and we didn’t. We attacked the play with the wrong shoulder, the corner gets blocked, and they got a big run. We have to do a better job in that. For the most part, when we are going good, it is pretty to watch because it is hard to block. It puts the offense in a disadvantage because you have got guys moving. When it is orchestrated, it is tough."