HEAD COACH HERM EDWARDS PREVIEWS OKLAHOMA STATE (SEPT. 5, 2022)
OPENING STATEMENT:
“Updates on injuries, I misspoke after the game on Joey Ramos. I know better than that, he had a high-ankle sprain but it’s worse than we anticipated and he’s listed as OUT for the season. Ed Woods will be out this game, Des Holmes is questionable, (Timarcus) Davis is back, and (Jordan) Clark is a game-time decision. So that’s where we are with the injury updates. I talked to Joey and told him I apologized, saying what I said as I should know better. I was taking it for what I heard on the sideline but I should’ve called for clarification. I’m sorry if I put you guys in a place where you don’t want to be. One thing I don’t do is fabricate stuff or try to trick people. I’m a truth kind of guy and I say it the way I say it. With that being said, we have a game this week obviously against a very, very good football team. They’re very confident and very aggressive in all three phases of football. They have an identity of what they want to do offensively, how they play defensively is very explosive and the quarterback is really good. Watching on tape it’s kind of fun to watch. Making an unannounced play, extending plays and they have a gifted receiving core. Some good runners offensively and very explosive. They score points as I was talking to our team and I said ‘It’s kind of interesting how you score 40 points and you don’t win, that’s generally a good deal.’ When you score 40 points you got a good chance to win. Central Michigan did a nice job scoring some points but it wasn’t enough. Defensively, this team is very aggressive, they play a lot of man-to-man coverage. They’ll challenge you. They got some good rushers. Coach Mason has done a nice job over there and special team wise they got a left-foot punter. So there we go, their special teams is good, they’re very well coached. Coach Gundy has done a nice job and along with their Dunn’s as the Offensive Coordinator and Mason as the defensive coordinator. So they’re a really good football team, a great venue to play in obviously so we gotta be ready for that. Really noisy there, the quarterback does a lot with a cadence. He does a good job with a cadence, you can see that on tape against Central Michigan he had them jump offsides three-to-four times. He does a nice job with that and then the noise of the crowd, we’re going to have to deal with all that. It’s our first time together as a team going on the road. A special place to play obviously. We better be prepared to do that, we’ll have to play at our best, there’s no doubt.”
ON HOW THE OFFENSIVE LINE FUNCTIONED AND THE YOUNGER GUYS:
“I thought the depth was good, and losing Joey doesn’t help it. But we got some young guys that will get in there. Coach has done a nice job of really moving guys around, playing duel positions, and that shown up for us. But we got a good crew and a crew that has some experience. Just like anything else they have to play together. You think about the offense, the offensive line except Ladarius and Ben played together. The receivers are young and they haven’t played together. The tight-ends haven’t played together, the quarterback didn’t know any of them until after the Spring, so it’s a new group coming together and I thought for the most part after the first quarter we got going. We found a little bit. We need to get going this week for sure, it’s one of those games.”
ON THE RUNNING BACKS X AND DANIEL NGATA BEING IN THE GAMEPLAN:
“You look at our record, over 200 yards when we’re 15-1. Now with that being said, guess what Oklahoma State is going to do, they’re going to put some guys in the box and run the ball and can you beat us throwing the ball. That’s the first thing you think about, they’ll look at us and say ‘hey they want to run the ball’ but I think you still have to be able to do that. You can’t give up on that and hopefully, the score doesn’t get away to where all of a sudden you have to start abandoning it. You guys have watched us play. We’ve been fortunate here. We’ve had some good offensively line coaches and we’ve had some good running backs when I’ve been here. The running backs showed up, the run game showed up, and ran the ball for almost 300 yards, like 260 some yards. That’s important, that’s a little bit of our identity, that kind of is our offense a little bit along with some other things we want to do. But we found a way to win a game which was important.”
ON GHARIN STANSBURY STATUS, THE DEFENSIVE LINE, AND CRITICAL INJURIES:
“Still questionable, he’s getting better. He had a hamstring injury but it’s getting better so he’s going to be available. I don’t know if it’s think week, so a game-time decision probably for him as well. But the d-line, we got some depth there which is good. We got some good depth there. Well, it’s the old statement of next guy up, there’s nothing you can’t do about it, you gotta play the guys that are available and I tell the guys that all the time that, ‘your one hit away or a helmet coming off from entering the game’. You gotta prepare that way, and that’s what football is about, it’s really your preparation of the guys that might not be starters or in the rotation, and then all of a sudden you're in a starting role and so instead of playing 20 plays, you got to play 50 plays. So that’s what you find out, everyone wants to play until they have to play, ‘Ahh I want to play’ well, go play and see how it feels to play. There’s a difference between playing 15 snaps compared to 30 snaps. So you got to prepare yourself for that, just the stamina of doing it and the anxiety of doing that alone is hard. Sometimes people don’t realize that and I’ve been fortunate to be on teams that understand that and they’ll get it. If they do it helps you, but if they don’t then you have a little bit of a problem.”
ON THE PASSING NUMBERS OF EMORY JONES AND THE OFFENSE:
“Well, I just think if you look at the game, I was posed that question on ‘what is your identity and I said ‘it’s about how you win football games and what do you have to do that, to do that.’ I thought for the most part we went into the game feeling that we had an opportunity to control the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. With that being said, it was a matter of time before what it was going to look like, and after the first quarter came to intuition. From there it was like, ‘Okay, let’s just work on what we have to work on.’ Offensively and defensively let’s make it simple because we’re just trying to win a game right, and how do you do that is you see it unfolding, you don’t need to do anything. It came to a point where I’m not one of those guys where I never run the score up, you never try to get as many players in the game as you can, and you simplify it and let them gain experience. I’m not about running up scores. I’ve never done that. Even in pro football, I was taught that by my coaches when I was a young kid and I don’t do that and some people say ‘that’s what you got to do,’ and I say ‘no you don’t.’ I don’t believe in that, I believe you’re just trying to win a game, whether it’s by one point, ten points, seven points, three points, it’s a win. They don’t give you more wins because of how many points you score. You get the win or the loss, and that’s how I look at it.”
ON THE IMPACT OF THE UPCOMING 9/11 ANNIVERSARY:
“I happened to be the head coach of New York Jets on 9/11. I'll never forget that day for the rest of my life. And now you think about it, it seems like it was yesterday, but it wasn't. I think my proudest moment as a football coach was that the New York Jets went down there and went to the site and help the first responders. We brought in water and supplies, and saw those people down there and the rebuilding of it. I've been back since… but you don't forget that. And something that’s in the history books. People will read about it 30 years from now… I witnessed it; I saw it. So it's just, every time I get to this day, I think about all the lives that were lost, and all the people that were heroes and went in those buildings trying to get people out. And it's one thing when you're a couple states away when you are American, and how America came together. And the Red, White and Blue was what it is all about, but when you're there and you really see it… It was a sight that was like a movie that I thought I was watching. God bless all those that that were involved in the rescue and all those that have perished. We continue to pray for those families. Because it affects a lot of people; more than people imagine. It still affects a lot of us people today, believe it or not.”
ON THE TEAM RESPONDING TO PLAYING IN A TOUGH ROAD VENUE:
“Yeah, I think it's a great venue. I just talked to reporters there at the university. Just the atmosphere of it, and the team and the caliber team we’re playing too. We’re playing a very good football team. They’ve got a great home and venue. It's college football, and you're going down there and it's it's kind of what guys see on television right now. You're gonna be on television, in that stadium, right. And so I think our guys are excited. But I think they're also focused in on playing in all three phases. We do. And I think they know that. They they know exactly that. And the more you watch them on tape, the more you realize that, hey, we got to do a lot of good, we got to do a lot of things, right.”
ON THE NEW PLAYERS TRAVELLING TOGETHER FOR THEIR FIRST ROAD GAME:
“They came in, they were they were off today, came in Sunday, ran around a little bit, and we talked a little bit about it. But I wanted them to enjoy the win and all that stuff. And tomorrow's, for me, more of a focus on the plan on what's about to take place. You don't want to build it up to too much too, too fast, right? I got that some days to get to where we need to go. And I just that's how I think I think like a player. I try to come up with certain things every day to get them to start thinking about this is what it's going to feel like when we walk out, right. So it’s one day at a time.”
ON THE NEW 12-TEAM COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF EXPANSION:
“Oh I’m not surprised. Were you guys? What did I say before? TV runs it. Why wouldn’t you do that? I mean, how many NFL teams go to the playoffs? 12? There's only 32 teams. Think about that. It didn't surprise me. I mean, there's more than 32 college football teams. I’ve been fortunate to go to playoffs as a coach and as a player. But yeah, why wouldn’t you do that? I mean, it’s a lot in that. And that’s why you see these teams looking at conferences. Let me ask you this: To get 12, how do you think are coming out of the SEC? TV is a powerful, powerful tool. And you get a bunch of fans … There's a bunch of college fans out there, man. All over the country when you see it. When you watch Saturdays, you watch all these games, and football is the number one sport right now. It didn't used to be that way when I was growing up. It was baseball, but now it's football. And that's a good thing for football; for everybody that’s a football fan. And I would say that baseball, football and you have that many college teams. I mean, 12 is not like, to me, that wasn't a big number. I anticipated at least 10 or more. Because it makes sense. Why wouldn’t you do that? And it gives every conference a chance, you know, you sit there and say: ‘hey, we got a shot at this thing.’ And that's what you're selling going forward as a program. Hey look, all these teams can be in the playoffs, you know? You get this many teams, we got a chance to get in the playoffs. I mean, certain teams, you know, with four teams it's hard. That's hard sledding. You see really good teams lose one game and all of a sudden, they're out. We'd beat Oregon that one year here. And they were out. They were a good football team; a good football team. But now you got more opportunities. And that's what you sell as a coach. That's what you sell as your program and that's good for college football.”
ON THE ADAPTATIONS DUE TO THE TRANSFER RULES
“First of all, you got to recruit your own guys. You’ve got to keep recruiting them. So when you talk about going to get some other guys, well, how about keep the guys I got? Right? Because you're recruiting from: Can we keep my guys? How many high school players do I want to go after? How many portal guys I want to go after? It's just according to what your roster looks like, right? Our roster was in a position where we had to go get experienced football players because we lost so many guys … to the NFL, to guys going into the portal, all those things were apart of it. So I just think every year you have to have an idea of what your roster gonna look like. But the first thing about your roster is the guys you brought in, you better be recruiting those guys to make sure they are the ones willing to work. That's kind of important too.
THOUGHTS ON X VALLADAY’S PERFORMANCE vs. NAU:
“He hits the hole very quickly and then makes decisions, right? I thought early in the game, because we talked about it so much offensively, was don't turn the ball over. And I thought he was a cautious runner those first couple of runs. Watching him practice and watching him in the game and I was like, ‘woah,’ and I sat down with him after about the second series or so, and I took all the running backs and said, ‘Look, there's one guy we can't block. That's your job and make him miss.’ I wish I’d told him sooner. Then he started running. And you know, all of them started running. And I just think that sometimes you forget about a guy that's new to your program. And you know, he was trying to do everything right. He’s a fabulous football player and a great teammate. And I thought for his first game out he was really good. All those running backs. They did a good job.”
EXPECTATIONS FOR THE TEAM:
“That we keep our composure in an environment where it's gonna be really loud, and it's on the road, and all those things. How do you handle that now? We did a pretty good job here. It was what, three-to-nothing. And I looked at them, you know, I was good. I looked at them and I said they're in a good place. No one was very, very good; they were workman-like, you know, and now we’re going on the road. And obviously, you know, when you go to the sidelines when you're a little louder, you know, and how did they handle that? and so I just think it's another experience we're going to experience together as a team and we'll figure it out when I see it. But I think they will hopefully stay calm. Stay focused on the job at hand.”
THOUGHTS ON SECONDARY’S PERFORMANCE VS. NAU AND EXPECTATIONS vs. OKLA. ST.
“Pretty good, and Donnie played you know, made it simple. We felt like we were good enough to cover them. It's interesting because they've (Oklahoma State) got a good secondary and they play a lot of man, and that's going to be a big part of this team. How their back-end covers our guys. Can we cover their guys, right? Then the key to me is quarterback. How do you keep that guy in there? He’s really something. He’s fun to watch. He just makes all the throws, got strong arm, they got some good receivers and they've been in this offense. They have a sense of things. And when he extends the play, they kind of know what to do because they played with the quarterback and so they're really good. And defensively they're very aggressive.”
Defensive coordinator Donnie Henderson
ON HOW DEFENSE LOOKED AGAINST NAU AND CHANGES MOVING FORWARD AGAINST OKLA. ST.:
“I think I talked to you after the game and I told you I had to go look over the tape and it proved we made a ton of mistakes. We really did, and if we’re going to win this game we got to correct some of those. But that’s what showed up and that’s why I said to you, I have to wait until I see the tape. But we made a ton of mistakes and so we got to get those corrected. It was really fundamental things that you work on every day and then in the heat of the moment guys differ, getting frustrated, but overall we were pretty good, but we did make a lot of mistakes.”
ON HOW COMMUNICATION DEFENSIVELY FOR PLAYERS WENT IN THE FIRST GAME:
“We were pretty simple, vanilla. We didn’t do a lot of things obviously, so the communication was pretty good. We didn’t make a lot of mental mistakes as far as communication, it was more technique stuff. So if we clean up some of those technique errors and keep communicating like we did, I think we’ll be a lot better. We would have a better chance of winning for sure.”
ON SPENCER SANDERS:
“Athlete– extends plays, I’m scared. He really reminds me of that guy from Utah, he’s a pretty good athlete. He can move around, extends plays and knows where the ball’s gotta go. He makes all of the checks and is a pretty good player really.”
ON GAME PLAN AGAINST OKLA ST.:
“I think based on what I see right now, I’m a little bit concerned about trying, they protect well, they’ll sit in seven, eight men protection. So if you bring in guys with the skill, they got some athletes there too. So you gotta pick your poison. I would say down in distance formations, where the game is headed, how you’re playing– one of those types of deals. But I do think you gotta mix it up and keep them off balance. You can’t just sit there and be too conservative and think you’re gonna beat a pretty good team that people realize has been pretty good for years. All you hear about is Oklahoma, but they can go up the street and Oklahoma State’s been pretty good too, so I’m gonna have to keep them off balance a little bit, bring a little pressure, play in a locked zone and see where we can go from there.”
ON HOW TO KEEP THE PLAYERS MENTALLY IN THE GAME AGAINST OKLA ST.’S OFFENSE:
“I think the biggest thing, besides the quarterback, the biggest concern I have there is the tempo. They’re on the ball a lot and that can be frustrating if I don’t get the calls out to the defense, they become uneasy a little bit. So that’s one of the other concerns I have is the tempo of the game. So I got to make sure that I’m in stride with them running off or them running on, them on the ball, those things are going to be the factor.”
ON MERLIN ROBERTSON’S PERFORMANCE AFTER VIEWING TAPE:
“I think he played well, it was physical. I mean you’ve seen some plays he’s made on the open field– a couple of screens he made, he made some great tackles. It was physical and I thought he would play well as far as making adjustments when motion came toward him. Sometimes he had to get out of the box sometimes, sometimes he had to come back into the box, those things. I think he had maybe two mental errors when I think about what they gave me, I think we had two mental errors I don’t know exactly what they were. But, overall, just like what you said after looking at the video, I wanted to look at the tape and after looking at the tape, he played well.”
ON DJ TAYLOR’S PERFORMANCE AND PLAY MOVING FORWARD:
“I think what he’s gotta do and what we gotta do is let him mature and play the nickel spot and come alive and understand that. What people don’t realize is that’s one of the toughest positions because you’re playing their third receivers, who’s usually their first receiver when they go three wides. So they’re bringing him in for a reason and a lot of passes go to him meaning the third receiver, so we’re going to leave DJ alone. I think he learned some things that you have to get into the fire to really realize how fast people are and how nifty receivers are, so it’s to be a learning stage for him so to speak.”
ON CONCERN OF DEPTH OF DEFENSE WITH PLAYERS RETURNING:
“You’re always concerned at depth, especially at the corner position. When those guys go down, you got to have corners that can run obviously and change directions and if their lower extremities are bad, that’s the problem. But I’m still happy by getting guys back unfortunately for Ed’s first game starting and he gets injured. I think it’s the lower extremity. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but to get TD back should be good.”
ON GETTING SACKS BEING AN EMPHASIS IN STILLWATER:
“Pressure and sacks are two different things. I mean if we’re hitting the quarterback after he delivers the ball, that’s as good as sacking at times. The biggest thing for me is I would prefer to have more hits on the quarterback because you’re not going to get more sacks and it just doesn’t happen that way. So if you get more hits on the quarterback, that’s a plus for us.”
ON CHANGES HENDERSON FEELS NEED TO BE MADE:
“It’s just situations. You know third down you like to see guys get up to the field and be a little more physical and faster and hitting the quarterbacks. But when it’s first and second down you gotta play standard defense, make sure you control the line of scrimmage. Now if we get in those situations where it’s third and second and long, we could open up the line a little bit and let them run some games, things like that, we’ll do that. But again, I’m more interested in hits than sacks. If you get sacks, great but if you hit the quarterback as much as you hit the quarterback, you might three or four sacks in a game, but you can hit the quarterback eight, nine or 10 times, then that’s just as good.”
ON QUALITY OF MATCHUP WITH OSU:
“I think it’s gonna be big. I mean we’re going on the road to play a great opponent and we’d like to show well, obviously compete, be physical, keep the ball in front, try to contain the quarterback, play our style of defense so to speak. The noise is gonna be an issue, well it won’t be for them because they’ll be quiet but the tempo for me is making sure we understand that as far as where we’re at defensively right now, you’re absolutely right. I think I might have said between two and three games you start to figure out who you are and we’re still trying to figure that out. I mean let’s be honest we played a pretty good game last week and I’ll leave it at that. But the opponent we’re going to play is somebody that you’ll be able to measure yourself a little bit when you come out of that game. Let’s say we win the game, it’s 20-21, I’ll be happy. If we win the game, it’s 54-53, I’m still gonna be happy. So I’m still trying to find it, I think we’re forming our identity a little bit, we still don’t know exactly what that is.”
ON WHAT HE’S REALLY TRYING TO GET ACROSS THE TEAM FOR FUTURE OPPONENTS:
“We gotta look at the ball. We can’t be listening to the cadence and that’s what happened to us in the game. We intercepted the ball and took it back and the next thing we’re offsides and those are penalties before the ball is even snapped. You can’t do that, like this guy has drawn, like they got four offsides last week I believe. I’m not sure of the number but I know it was over three, so I mean his cadence in his voice, we can’t be listening to that and we gotta look at the ball move. We took away a touchdown, come on. You know how many chances you get to score in a game? You score twice to both of those penalties and we gotta do a better job– stay on size, don’t hold, let us get into the inside.”