Herm Edwards
Opening statement
“As we enter our Pac-12 season, our opponent Colorado, when you look at them on tape, they have a very good defense and they don’t allow a lot of points. The last game when they played the ball got turned over a bit and put their defense in bad situations but they’re very sound. They don’t give up a lot of points. Offensively, they have a talented group of wide receivers and some running backs. The quarterback is similar to the guy we just played, he’s got a good arm and can make a lot of plays with his legs. They are a football team that has some talent and they are big upfront on their offensive line. Defensively, they’re long and have a really good secondary. They play a lot of man to man and play a lot of press coverage so that’s going to be a test for us in the passing game, to try to get guys open. They play very physical, they’re a very physical football team so we have our work cut out for us. The Pac-12 is one of those conferences that seems like when we get into conference play, anything can happen. We have nine games left and they’re all Pac-12 games so that will dictate what type of team we are going forward. That’s where I think everyone is at right now when you think about the Pac-12. It’s very interesting to say the least. Right now, we don’t have a win or a loss in the Pac-12 and the season starts this Saturday. We’re excited for the opportunity to play at home again, and hopefully we can clean up some of our miscues that we had our last outing against BYU. We had a good talk with the team and I met with the team captains, so we will see where it goes from there.”
On building on Jayden’s stats against BYU:
“I would hope so because you are going to need some explosive plays and they can’t all come from the running game or from Jayden with his legs; you need some explosive passes. Against BYU we hit one and it got called back. We hit a few but we can’t get them called back. I think that’s how you have to move the ball at times, you have to hit some big explosive plays. We know we can have some explosive runs but we need some explosive plays in the passing game. That always helps you and it gets the offense excited as well.”
On operational issues with Jayden’s wristband:
“We had a long talk with the offensive staff and I won’t be able to tell you exactly what was talked about but I’m pretty sure we have that fixed, we have that solved and it should never be an issue again for us going forward. It shouldn’t be and I think we’re all on the same page about what needs to transpire and take place. When you look at our football team and play a game like that, against a good opponent, it’s going to be very difficult to win. When you turn the ball over and you put yourself in bad positions numerous times due to your own miscues, that can’t be a part of it. Hopefully, it’s a good learning lesson for us. Generally, if you’re a good football team, you’re going to average around four to five fouls a game and last year we were that. Since I’ve been here, we’ve been like that and now that number is catastrophic and you can’t survive playing good football like that. We feel like we have a pretty good football team here but we can’t win games when we play like that, it’s very difficult.”
On not dwelling on bad games:
“It’s us. It was really us, we played against us. We put ourselves in bad positions, offensively and defensively. We gave them yards that weren’t earned by them making a play; it was by us misfiring or making a silly penalty. Those are the hidden yards that add up on you, when you play a good team and you give them another possession when you should be off the field, and then give them 15 more yards. It contributes to all of that. We’ve had enough guys that have been here and we’ve had this happen before. We’ve started off 2-0 before and lost a game and we found our way, and that’s football. How do you react to it? That's the whole key. When we’ve had enough guys that have been here in this program long enough, where we’ve been off to some good starts and we lost a game but we found our way back, and that’s what we have to do now. I think the guys are excited, it’s Pac-12 play now and all these games are very important.”
On Travez Moore:
“He’s out, he’s done.”
(Reporter) “For the year?”
“Yes.”
On Timarcus Davis and Deamonte Trayanum injury updates:
“All likelihood, that’s the hopeful thought. They are a lot better than what they were and it looks like we are headed that way.”
On frequency of talking with team captains:
“When necessary, I’ve done that numerous times, during camp, during the offseason, so I do it. I pick my spots, when it’s needed and when I want to make sure that everybody is on the same page and that we’re all understanding each other. Communication, I think, in life and football and everything else is very important.”
On the experienced group and surprise of penalties:
“I’ve done this long enough in my lifetime, nothing surprises me. When it happens, what do you do to prevent it from continuing to happen? I think that’s what we have to do and we have to take that upon ourselves. But, you’re right, you would assume that veteran guy's would play a little more calmly and for some reason they have not done that. I think it’s forcing things, trying to force things and make things happen. There has to be a quiet peace in you, when you play football. It’s a competitive, violent, sport within the framework of the rules and you always have to understand that. You have to maintain that peace about yourself, you can’t get outside of that because when you get outside of that, that’s when bad things occur.”
On importance of winning and improving game by game:
“I’ve had some really good wins and I’ve had some bad wins, where it didn’t look real good but it looked good in the win column. I think that anytime you win a football game, it’s important. You would like to play with a certain standard of how you play, that’s the dream of any coach. You play at a certain level and you make teams either match that and if they don’t, obviously your chances of winning go up. We’ve been so up and down, that’s the inconsistency of it all. You would love for everything to go right, special teams, offense, defense, that is your dream as a coach, that everything is functioning together, and you feel good about that. But, all it takes is a loss and then you’re searching for something else. That’s what's so great about the game, when you go through these peaks and valleys, you have to figure out how to get back to the peaks. We are in a little bit of a slump, we lost a game against a good football team, but the way we lost that’s what bothers all of us. It bothers me a lot, the fact that we didn’t give ourselves a really good chance. I’m not taking anything away from BYU, I think BYU is an excellent coached football team and they play hard. They did some things but we did some things to ourselves and we can’t continue to play like that, it’s going to be very difficult to win if we do."
On solving penalties:
“Well we have officials at practice, it’s just flat focus and keeping a calmness about yourself. When you commit penalties, you are either a step behind or your emotions get to you and you do something out of a snap second and then all of a sudden it's a foul. When you do that it hurts the team and when you compound as many foul's as we collected, it's very difficult to get out of that situation. You are going forward and then you knock yourself back. It's hard, football is too hard to do that.”
On new assistant coaches starting close to the start of the season:
“I think this puts people in a different position and you just have to adjust and I think our staff has done a good job of adjusting to be quite honest. Obviously having a voice in that room, before they did not have a voice while coaching the players per se, that has become part of it and we have done it now for a month and a half now and we have had some games to do that. But that’s just where we are at, and we do not dwell on that. That is in the past, we moved on, we are coaching football, we’re in the groove of our staff coming together and meeting and coaching, that is kind of where we are at.”
On players taking blame on Twitter after the loss and their leadership:
“Well I think the players who have been in the program know we all hold each other accountable and we are all involved in a loss just like we are all involved in a win. It’s the coaches, it’s the players, it’s everybody, it's never one person. I think players that do that, those are the kind of guys you want in your program because they understand the field does not lie. A coach can’t make a play a good play or a bad play, a coach makes the decisions and you make a good decision or a bad decision. Sometimes you might put a player in a position where you wish you could have made a better call and I have always said that’s when a player bails a coach out. There is this trust factor between coach and player and when you have that trust factor players speak up. They are not afraid to speak up and say things like hey, we have to fix things too but it is a common thread when you have coach and players that have a team that is together and this team is together, they won’t shatter or point fingers, we don’t do that around here, we have never done that around here, I never blamed a player for a loss in the history of me coaching, I don’t do that, that is not my personality. We lost together as a team and we have to fix it now and there’s some things we can fix, we need to play a clean game, that is next on the horizon, “Can we play a clean game?” Just play clean don’t turn the football over, don’t get a bunch of penalties, just play a clean game and see what it looks like and we might lose, I am not saying we are gonna win if we play a clean game but at least you walk out of the ball yard and say at least we didn’t beat ourselves, we did not give them extra opportunities, that is what you want and that’s what players want and that’s what coaches want. That’s what you strive for. This game is about perfection, you are always trying to be perfect. That’s what you always chase and that’s just part of the narrative when you coach and play football.”
On the vibe of the players and captions:
“That they are disappointed, they are disappointed. You guys have watched this team play for four years. The one thing I will say, this team never has not played hard. They play physical, which is not playing smart right? Since we have been here, this team always competes. It leaves everything they have on the grass. They never leave the field and say, “hey man we you know” ...I never worry about that. That is the least of my worries as a head coach, playing hard, playing physical, competing, we did not play smart and we have to get that fixed. We have to get that fixed. We just need to play smart and if we do that, we have a chance.”
On African American coaching in the Pac-12:
I think that it is always uplifting when you see the younger coaches that aspire to be coordinators and head coaches. Anytime you see somebody that gets an opportunity like that, it gives you energy. It gives people energy. I would hope that one day, I'll be long gone, probably with my grandkids watching football games, that we don’t have to talk about it. It is not like, “Oh guess what happened, it is just not a conversation anymore right?” I think it has to be a conversation when it happens to bring some light onto it and that is where we are at and that’s just the history of this game when you go back and look at it and I have been involved in it a long, long, long, long, time and it has been a long road for a lot of coaches that never got opportunities and I think anytime you get an opportunity, you have to realize you are standing on someone else's shoulders. Hopefully you are in a position to give a hand up to elevate guys in positions so that they can be coordinators and head coaches, that is a good thing. That’s a good thing for sports. Not just football, sports in general, women, men, whatever it is just elevate people and gives them opportunities. I think that is what sports are all about. Sports are a rainbow of all kinds of people, players when it comes to athletes, on the other side it, we are still a little behind when it comes to coaching and the management part of it and the people that sit in the executive seats that make decisions, we are still a little bit behind. And hopefully like I said, when I am sitting in around with my grandkids or my daughters you guys won’t be asking questions about that it will just be, this is what it is, this is what it looks like and that is what our world looks like so that is what I am hopeful for to be quite honest.”
On remaining player updates:
“He (Chase) was up in the meeting. I saw him today, he feels okay. (Shannon) He is walking around, he should be fine as well. I think both of those guys should be okay, it is a physical game. I think we have nine physical football games coming up now, in a row, everyone beats up on everyone, you kind of anticipate that going into the Pac-12 play."