Coach Edwards
Opening Statement
“We had a lot to do obviously. I think it’s always good to get a bye to really reflect on the things you need to work on offensively, defensively, and special teams. I think we addressed all those situations. Coaches did a good job of really capitalizing on things we need to improve on for the next five games of the season. I think the players had a good mindset when they came back Sunday. They were well aware of our situation, being a 5-2 football team. Basically, when you look at the South and the North, I said it earlier in the season, before the season, that no one’s going to be undefeated in conference play and that holds true again this year. No one’s undefeated, everyone has a loss, it’s kinda interesting and I think going forward when you look at both sides of it whether it’s the South or the North, there’s three or four teams that when you look at the conference schedule, have a shot. That’s what makes it so interesting in the Pac-12 play, that everyone has an outside shot. If you won some games and we happen to be one of those games. So, I think that’s the exciting part and now there’s a lot of work to be done. We play a good Washington State football team. They went through a little bit of a situation last week with their coach, the staff that was a part of that staff had been let go, the assistant coaches that were on that staff took over and did a fabulous job along with the players. Really playing good football and they’re a 4-4 football team and have a lot of experience on both sides of the ball. They have a big powerful offensive line, a strong armed quarterback, they have two really good runners, they have great contact balance, the wide receivers are nifty, and they have some length outside. Defensively they’re very active with what they do. They have an outstanding secondary that plays a lot of man to man coverage, linebackers that run from sideline to sideline. They’re a very much improved defense, don’t give up a lot of points averaging about 25 points a game I believe it is. They get after the quarterback, they do a lot of good things, and this is a game where obviously both teams need. You gotta keep winning in the Pac-12 because you’re running out of time and you’re running out of games and we know we have 5 games left and this is an important game for us as well as for them.”
On the issue of penalties and moving forward
“ I think moving forward, as a head coach I’ve never had a penalty because I don’t play. The players have to realize that and I think the more you capitalize it, we have 33 fouls on offense, 33 fouls. We have 23 on defense and 11 on special teams. So, when you think about it, you’re averaging almost nine penalties a game, for almost 100 yards. So, it's amazing we’re 5-2, we’re actually spotting the team 100 yards, saying ‘you can have 100 yards’ and we’re going to play from a deficit and go try to win. That’s very difficult to do and we found a way to do it but you can’t keep living in that world. I think the players understand that, they don’t intentionally go out there and say ‘I’m going to go get a foul’, they don’t do that intentionally but the two games that they reared its head and it cost us and those teams beat us as well I’m not taking anything away but, you give second opportunities to offenses or you give them extra yards with the fouls tacked on. You know that, you guys are smart enough to figure that out. Offensively, you get yourself in some bad downs and you’re looking at 2nd and 15 or 3rd and 20, there’s no play for 3rd and 20. You get yourself in a bad way and you try to fight through all that and we’ve been fortunate enough to do that and win five games. But you can’t keep living like that and the players understand that and they have to fix it. I can talk about it, I can do things in practice, we have officials, they got to do it. They have to go ‘okay no foolish fouls, let's stay away from that’. There’s going to be a penalty every once and a while but we have to get that corrected if we want to win in a fashion where that doesn’t prevent us from winning. Now that’s not the only thing obviously, but that’s a big factor.”
On Washington State playing BYU and how that game can be used materially
“In material, because they are what they’re going to do and it’s one of those tight football games, it went back and forth and they had opportunities and BYU did a good job of preventing some plays. There’s about 10 plays in every football game that you lose that you go ‘I wish I could’ve had that one’ but you don’t. There’s probably in that game, you have to look at it and read the side of the ball and say this play or that play, it’s about opportunities and we talk about that a lot. You never know what opportunity presents itself when the play kind of happens, you make it or you don’t. Missed opportunities are critical in games, especially in the Pac-12 because when you watch it every week, you just sit there and watch the games and go ‘this team had that record, this team has that record’ it doesn’t matter. I said it in the beginning of the season and it’s holding true. Okay, everybody can beat anybody on a Saturday night or we got a day game and so, I just think that that’s the conference and it’s kind of interesting when you look at it because you look at the UCLA vs. Oregon game was a pretty fun game to watch and it was very entertaining, it went back and forth and then all of the sudden a couple things happened and the energy switched and a team got momentum. Football is a game of momentum, when you have it it’s fun to have and it’s fun to watch. When you don’t have it, how do you stop the momentum of it, it’s like this ball that’s rolling on you and how do I stop momentum to get it back. That’s the Utah game for us. If you look at it, it’s two halves.I told the team we lost the second half of the game, the first half of the game we won but the problem is we played two halves. The second half we did not, they got momentum and we couldn’t stop it, we couldn’t slow it down on defense, we couldn’t generate on offense, and hats off to them. That’s the way the game is played and we have another chance to try and correct it this weekend on Saturday afternoon. I keep saying that like and it’s like wow we play a day game, interesting. I don’t know what to do, I generally get here five hours before but now I’m going to get around four o’clock probably. It’s early but I get up that early so we’ll see.”
On update of injured players
“Chase (Lucas) is obviously ready to play, that’ll be good. Johnny (Wilson) I think is ready to play, Evan (Fields) will be a game time situation but other than that I think most of our guys, we’ve got a lot of guys back, I mean the guys that have been injured for the season, we don’t get those guys back, we’ve lost some pretty good players, especially on the D-line that are gone, that’s just how it goes, every team has that.”
On taking the bye to heal and prepare for the next game
“I think what you go back to is your experience in the NFL, when a bye week occurs and how you want to handle it and I thought for the most part, the players that needed rest. It was interesting during those practices that we ended up having, a lot of the athletes that don’t get to play, practice with structure for them. So, you’re talking about the thirds, some walk-on guys, we actually practice with those guys. Where our other guys go on another field doing what they needed to do but we try to bring those guys along. I think it was good, they felt excited about the opportunity to play in our offense and our defense and also, when you do that, I think you put them on the spot a little bit. It’s easy to sit in the classroom where you think you know until you actually have to go do it. So now, we asked them to run our offense and defense, competitively against each other, it was interesting to see where guys were. I think that’s always a barometer of where guys are in the program when they don’t get to play a lot.
On what he could do during the bye week that he usually can’t
“I just think you evaluate yourself, you kind of look back at all the things offensively, defensively, and special teams and that’s what the coaches are trained to do. But, outside of football, for me, no I was here every day. I didn’t miss a day, the coaches were done Thursday, I believe it was, and they got out of here for a little while. A lot of guys went on the road to recruit, which is still important and they did a good job. Some guys were local and some guys went out. Some guys did it in today's world by the screen, you can do it that way as well. Looked at some tapes of some kids, but other than that it was more preparing ourselves for the next five weeks of football.”
On getting players in the right frame of mind during games
“It's important that the leaders on your team have to provide energy. When you feel like it's going in the wrong direction for you, and we have enough guys that have experienced that know that, that is part of being a leader. Leading is easy when you're when everybody wants to lead them. It's when it's hard, and that is when you have to say some things sometimes to get guys' attention, and I think our guys understand that we have some good leaders on this team. The next five weeks they need to be leaders. There's no doubt about that because it's an important part of our season right now as we head down the stretch, and every game is important. We want to get our momentum back, and we kind of lost it. Now we got to find it again, we'll get it back.”
On what he addressed with the team leaders
“Yeah, I talked to him about a lot of things and I talked to the leaders. I wrote them a nice letter. I told them what I expected out of him. Sometimes I think when you talk to him in person, that's one thing, but when they can read it and look at it, it kind of sinks in. I know I've always been that way when I get a letter from somebody. I really have to focus in on what this thing is saying and I can read it over and over again. So, I sent up a nice letter about what I expected from them and what they need to do. That is part of my job as a head coach to always inform the players where we're at. As you know, you guys have followed me long enough, but we are never in panic mode. We just let things settle and go about our business.”
On resetting and getting into rhythm after a bye
“It can help you. No doubt, it helps you when you can pause and let guys reflect on where they're at. Let the emotions of a loss get out of their system and then come back tomorrow. It is a big practice day for us, I mean it's really big in the fact that how we get going and practice. The energy that we need in practice, the focus we need, it's all about the preparation. The game takes care of itself. It is the week of preparation and being dialed in on what we need to do. That's the most important thing and I think this team understands that we've had two little setbacks. The first one was the BYU game and we found a way to get ourselves back. This was a setback, obviously, a week ago and now we have to find our way to get ourselves back. That's the most important thing right.”
On Donnie Henderson’s transition to ASU through seven games
“Between that room and the wide receiver room, it's a hard room because of all the personalities that you have. I can say that because I played the position, coached the position, and it's a hard room because you have a lot of "A" personality players in there. Donnie has been around it. He has worked for me as a coordinator. He's an excellent football coach and I think it's taken him a while to learn the players, because you just don't walk in the room. You have to earn their trust. Donnie has done that, he's very honest. He has a way about him, we can communicate. I think, he's feeling better now than he was the first week of work right. I mean this is hard and there was three coaches put in some tough spots. You have to win the trust of the room and it takes time to do that because you're the coach. It's like when I became the head coach here I said the first thing I have to do is earn your trust. You might respect me, that is one thing, but I want you to trust me. And that comes along with when you're winning. When you have a couple of tough losses, how does the coach react on this, how does he respond? I'm glad Donnie was here and he's really doing a good job with those guys you know. He's dealing with a lot of guys. All of a sudden injuries have taken place too, so you got to play some freshmen that might not be ready to play or some guys that don't have a lot of experience. He's done a really nice job.”
On his expectations for D.J. Taylor the rest of the season
“I do and I think I watched something yesterday, or day before yesterday in meetings. Here's another young man that they came in last year for a four-game season and had an outstanding return against Arizona and then had another one the week before against UCLA. I think in his mind coming back this year he felt like every time he touches the ball, he's got to go run for 100 yards or something. It's not about that. It's about making good decisions. I think this year there was some decisions that he probably made that he wish he didn't. It is a learning experience for all because he's still young. I think by taking him out and letting him watch it kind of hit home to him. It's not about me just catching the ball and money, it's about all the little things. Watching him in meetings and watching him I’ll let you know, yesterday in our walk through, he was focusing in on the ball and just the little things you got to do. It was good to see. So, yeah, he can help us down the stretch. There's no doubt because he is electric when he gets the ball in his hands.”
On the special teams personnel
“Yeah what happens is, when the injury occurs, a coach sent somebody in and we already had the guy in there. So I got a call timeout, we can't do that. But I just think that when you're dealing with all those guys. There's so many guys on offense, defense, and special teams. I've mentioned to them that a couple things happen. Third down is critical. Especially if something's about to have something good for us if we have the ball, or if we don't have the ball and we stopped them, there's going to be a change of players. When we score, you're going to know before we even score if we are going for two or not because I'm gonna tell them. I tell when we are in a situation where we're crossing the plus 40, there's gonna be some decisions made by me. Do we go for it on 4th & 2 or 4th & 3. Sometimes you feel like you're in field goal range and all of a sudden you get stopped then you get knocked back. And now instead of going for it on fourth down, you got to kick a field goal. So you have to be aware of that. Sometimes guys aren't just honed in; they're over there kicking in the net or whatever. And it's like, ‘Hey man, you gotta go.’ You know, you gotta go. And so I think that's part of it too, he has a strong leg, and we feel like 50 yards or close to 60, he can hit it. Now, actually making them a little tougher. But he has a strong enough leg, and we'll use him in more situations where we have to kick it that way. I think being prepared, knowing the game and the situation is important. I talk about that all the time. And we've got to do a better job at it.”
On the offensive line protecting the QB
“A lot of times sacks are due to knowing the situation when you're behind. If you're a defensive player, you know they have to pass. We're in a tough spot, especially if you're in small situations where it's not 3rd & 3 or 3rd & 5. It is 3rd & 15 and I think when a guy is struggling, or they have an elite pass rusher, you have to find a way to turn protection that way. Have the back go that way, put a tight end over there something to alleviate that pressure. It is all according to how the game is being played out. If you watch games all the time, the NFL game, they got the best players in captivity. When the game is three or four score lead and they have to go back and throw it, it is not fun for the quarterback because they're coming. There's no run threat and so it's hard. That's what makes football so unique. It's hard on those guys at any level and I just think knowing that you have to ask yourself a couple questions. Are you willing to release five and put your tackles on an island and say you got to block the guy? So that's part of the chess game you got to play in, with somebody getting to the quarterback, If there is one guy, you have to turn your protection or you have to put in the back or tight end to stop them.”