Bobcat Press Conference Transcript
9/5/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
SOPHOMORE LINEBACKER DANE FLETCHER
What kind of reaction in the film room did you get from your hits on Stephen McGee?
Dane Fletcher: "They were cool. They (looked) harder than I thought they were going to. When I hit him I forgot about it, I was worried about the ball more than the actual hit itself. When you see them on film it really seems a little better than it really was."
What will practice be like this week?
DF: "We're bringing the same intensity to ever practice this week, we're having the same amount of practices, and treating it like any other game week. We're keeping our minds in the game and staying focused."
Does a team like Texas A&M expose your mistakes more than a team that's not as sound?
DF: "They exposed a lot of different aspects of our game, and that's going to definitely help us coming into the next game. We'll be sound hopefully by this Friday."
What will you do Saturday?
DF: "I'm not really sure right now."
How can you bring the same intensity to the next game?
DF: "I think we played well in the Texas A&M game. I don't think it's going to be too hard to keep the intensity up in this next week because it just shows how far we have come and how much farther we can come to be a successful team."
Opinion on the bye week?
DF: "We have a couple of guys down so it helps us in a way, but also it would be nice to get back on the field again and have that bye later in the season. Either way, you just go past it and go on with life."
How hard was it to get out of bed on Sunday morning?
DF: "More like Sunday afternoon. I wasn't really sore (Saturday) night, I cramped up a little on the plane ride home, but definitely (the next morning) I tried to get up and it was hard. It took like an hour to get all the way out of bed."
Are you looking forward to playing in front of the home crowd next week?
DF: "It's nice to go somewhere like Texas and have that many fans against you, but this is way better as far as (having the fans) on your side. That will help you in any kind of game."
SENIOR QUARTERBACK JACK ROLOVICH
What impression do you have from watching the A&M game film?
JR: “I think we showed some good things, but there are always things to work on. After any game I don’t think you can be too critical of yourself. After this game, there were plenty of mistakes. We did show some good things, but there are always things you can improve on.”
How much of Saturday was MSU’s mistakes, how much was A&M?
JR: “They were a good team, yeah, but I think we can really point the finger at ourselves. There were a lot of things we didn’t do right. Marching to that point in the red zone was good, but if you don’t put points on the board it doesn’t matter.”
Does the emphasis become finishing drives in the next two weeks?
JR: “Oh, yeah, for sure. I don’t doubt that at all. We did put up good numbers, I think we had more yards, time of possession, first downs. Typically you’d look at that and you would think we would win that game, but obviously the score doesn’t reflect that. I think we just have to finish.”
How would you rate yourself on the scramble late in the first half?
JR: “I was just playing out there, just playing backyard football. I could have thrown it away or thrown it a little sooner so we’d have a chance at a field goal or something like that. But the adrenaline was running, and you just have to learn from your mistakes.”
The team struggled at home some last year, do you feel a difference this year?
JR: “Last year is in the past. We’re not really thinking about it. I couldn’t tell you exactly why or what mentality we had that made us lost those games, but I think that as a whole mentally we have a different group this year and we’ll be ready to play.”
Is this year’s receivers group more balanced?
JR: “That keeps defenses off balance a little bit more, because last year they could double-team Mike (Jefferson) and stuff like that. A lot of it’s just making reads and finding the open guy. I don’t think we key on one receiver or anything like that, so it’s kind of nice.”
Did you feel MSU took what was given it on Saturday?
JR: “They didn’t blitz us much at the beginning of the game, they really only blitzed us the last couple of drives. They weren’t really giving away the deep ball, and their D-line was really good, so we knew we’d have to get the ball out quick.”
Were you comfortable running the offense Saturday?
JR: “Of course there’s growing pains and things to work on, but you don’t really know how it’s going to feel until you get out there and play. When you get out there you remember why you play this game. I really love it.”
Comment on the game’s first drive?
JR: “There was a lot of speculation before the game on the score and how good Texas A&M was going to be and how we were going to be with the new coaching staff and everything. I think with that first drive we put some confidence in the team and the people watching that, ‘Yeah, it’s Texas A&M, but we can do it.’”
What do you think of the bye week?
JR: “You don’t really think about it as a player. It’s just a bye week. I don’t think there’s a good or bad time to have a bye week. You just have to focus and look at it in a positive light as we’re going to have two weeks to prepare for Dixie State.”
Comment on playing a home game in two weekends?
JR: “The fans here are great. The whole community here is just awesome. When I was at Hawaii it was more rooting for football in itself, but here it’s a certain bond they have with the Bobcats. It’s great, and we really appreciate it.”
JUNIOR RECEIVER DEON TOLIVER
What was it like to play after missing the last few games of ’06?
DT: “It was a little fast at first, not playing in a real game for a while, but it slowed down for me and I was able to play how I used to. It was fun.”
Is your collar bone healthy?
DT: “I don’t really think about it. I thought about it before the game, falling on it, but once I got in there that was out of my head. I was just concentrating on playing hard and helping the team win.”
Do all the receivers feel there’s a chance they’re going to get the ball so they have to be ready?
DT: “We really didn’t know how it was going to go, who was going to get the most balls, who was going to get the most touches. We were just out there ready to play, and we were happy because we each got about four catches, me and Josh and Ty. We all are ready to step up.”
Does not having many drops boost the group’s confidence?
DT: “I think it’s a confidence booster, getting out there and doing what we had to do. There’s still a lot of things we can work on, especially myself. There’s a lot of stuff I can work on. But I think that really set the tone for the rest of the season.”
The receivers caught the ball well Saturday, is that the goal?
DT: “We always expect that, first, we catch the ball, and after that we concentrate on getting up the field.”
Will you hesitate to dive for the ball?
DT: “No hesitation. You might think about it before the game or something, but during the game it’s all adrenaline. I’ll jump for any ball. I’m not going to worry about it.”
Will preparation for Dixie State be any different?
DT: “I’m going to treat them just like I did Texas A&M. I was in watching film on Texas A&M since the beginning of fall camp. You don’t want to treat them like they’re below us or something, they’re a good team, too. We’ll watch film and try to attack their weaknesses.”
Does losing Saturday’s game make you hungrier next week?
DT: “I’m hungry all the time. I want to win every game. We did good against Texas A&M, but the whole team, we want to win this game a lot. We’ll have our fans there, and we definitely want to play well for our fans.”
MSU COACH ROB ASH
“I’ve watched the film quite a bit. Nothing beats having game film to watch. You can practice all you want, you can watch spring ball, last year, whatever, but you don’t know about your team until you don’t know about your team until you play a game and watch the tape. We’ve watched that extensively. I have an adage that I’ll use several times this year, which is when you watch the tape you’re never as good as you thought you were and you’re never as bad as you thought you were after games. I was happy with the effort, not with the score but with the effort generally coming out of the game. Watching tape there were probably more mistakes with execution and assignments in that game than I thought watching the game in person. The good news is we overcame those mistakes with a lot of effort and good performance in general, with guys hustling and trying to make plays. The other good news is that what we did see in terms of those mistakes are things that are correctible. Lots of assignment things that we can fix. That’s a very, very positive sign, that we played a reasonable game in a game where we made quite a few mistakes. We get those fixed and I think that bodes very well for the future, assuming we can get those fixed. And, I think we can.”
Were you happy with how this team competed?
“That was by far the best outcome of this game, this exercise, we found out that this group of guys will back down from no one, the circumstances of the game and the surroundings will not affect them, they’ll go play with discipline, they will play with great effort. Those are extremely positive characteristics of this group of guys. The only factor I’ve cautioned them about, which we have to be concerned with, is did we play at a level that mirrored the setting, with the competition we were playing, the stadium, the number of people there, and will that level fluctuate with the number of people in the stands and who the opponent is, or do we have a team that will play at that standard all the time. That’s obviously what we’re shooting for and that’s our quest for the next game. That’s what we’ll find out the next game, will we be as ready and as focused in front of 15,000 fans as we were in front of 80,000 fans.”
I have such love for the game of football, and such respect for the game of football, that the game deserves that kind of effort if there are no people in the stands. You need to play this game with your best emotional focus and your best commitment and effort no matter who’s watching and no matter who the opponent is. It’s not about all the external factors, it’s about the game. And I expect our guys to do that.”
On injuries to Aaron Mason and Brandon Hoffenbacker
“We’re expecting Aaron to be able to play against Dixie, and we think Hoffenbacker will be out for a few weeks. With Hoffenbacker, it’s a glass half full-half empty scenario. He’s going to miss a little bit, but he’s not out for the season. That’s the good news and bad news together. We get Chris Kolone back, he’s fine and (ready) to play and he’ll have his first action against Dixie. That’s a positive thing. We had to take Dan Ogden’s redshirt off in the middle of the game, or actually in the third quarter when Hoffenbacker got hurt. We had Dan on the trip, we were going to try to protect him, but we had to take that (red) shirt off.”
On DeAndre Green’s situation
“DeAndre’s situation is still up in the air.”
Do you work on what you’ve already put in this week, or on new things?
“This week will be a mixture. (Tuesday and Wednesday) will be in full pads, it will be like preseason camp all over again, a lot of fix-it situations, going back over things in the A&M game and trying to get those corrected. We’ll have some tough physical contact this week to try to keep our edge, some conditioning. There may be a few tweaks and add-ons. Only having the short time that we did in the preseason there are still things on both sides of the ball that we haven’t got installed yet, but we have to be a little careful. We want to build on what’s already in there and not try to add a lot new. Toward the end of the week we’ll look at Dixie a little bit because we can. We’ll get the tape in from their Adams State game and that’s the one game we’ll get to see, so we’ll have to start working on them. That will start Thursday and Friday, then we’ll come back and have a full week of preparation for them the next week.”
Will you use a three-tailback rotation?
“It’s nice to have three you can play. I really don’t know how that’s going to go. A lot of it has to do with how quickly Aaron gets back and what he looks like when he does get back. It’s just nice to know that Isaiah and Demetrius have the ability to play. That was one of the best outcomes of the game. I always try to find a positive in everything. I hated it that Aaron got hurt because he’s a good player and it would have been nice to have him there. And, I’m sure it was very disappointing to him. But Demetrius got a lot more carries because of Aaron’s injuries, and it helped us because now we know because he’s a guy we can put on the field very safely and he can do good things for us.”
On the receivers
“We’ve got to stop talking about them like it’s a surprise. They’re playing very well, and knock on wood it will continue. I’m very happy that we have good balance there. The guys are working hard after the catch. We’re getting the ball down the field some, and they’re going up and making plays.”
Evaluate the team’s execution
“Defensively we have to fit every play right every time. We just didn’t do that. It’s a gap control defense, that’s how you play the game. If you’re going to be sound on defense you have a guy in every gap, everybody fits things, you squeeze it to a linebacker, spill it to a safety, that’s how you’ve got to play. If you have 10 guys do it right and the 11ththguy overlaps in a different gap and they happen to run the ball there if they have a good player it’s going to be a big play. That’s how we got hurt numerous times. If you blitz and don’t keep the pocket contained the blitz is wasted. The guy just escapes out the side door. You can’t let those things happen, so there’s issues there. Offensively, there were running plays where we didn’t get a hat on a hat, there were reads that didn’t go in the right progression, there were route depths at nine yards that needed to be at 12 yards. Those kinds of things have to be fixed if we’re going to be any good. You watch it on tape, you see it happen, and you go back to the drawing board and fix it. That’s what this process is about. There are a lot of things to fix.”
Evaluate the kicking situation
“We’ve put Eric’s job on the line. Mike Sweeney is going to have a chance to compete for the job. We’ll chart them and do competitive kicks in practice and simulate game conditions the best we can in practice. We’ll look at operation times and we’ll look at accuracy and consistency and we’ll make a decision on who the kicker’s going to be a week from (Wednesday).”
On MSU’s kicking game
“You have to make them. That’s the kicker’s job. It’s our job as a team to convert those points. When you get down to the red zone you have to score. Our goal is to score 100 percent of the time inside the 25-yard line, and that’s Eric’s and Mike’s field goal range, we expect those kicks to be in if we settle for a field goal and don’t score a touchdown, which is obviously our first goal. It would be nice to take the pressure off them and score touchdowns, too. They’re both good kickers. That setting is tough, and it was the first game (as MSU’s place kicker) for Eric, I understand that. He’s going to be really good, he’ll be a fine kicker. He just needs some confidence. We need to put some pressure on him to simulate game situations. That’s why we put the opened the job up, to put a little edge into the competition this week.”
What are you going to do Saturday?
“I’m going to watch some games on TV. We gave the guys the day off, pending how they perform this week.”
On the team’s physical condition after A&M
“We’re OK now. We gave them all day off on Sunday, (Monday) all they did was a light lifting workout, a recovery workout, and some stretching and some striders, some running just to loosen them up. They’ve had two solid days to recover. There’ll be a guy or two that have to be limited from contact, but by far the majority of the guys are ready to go. We need to do this now so we can have another period to recover and be ready to go physically on the 15th.”
Did the O-line look as good on film as you thought Saturday night?
“The film definitely bore that out. The offensive line did an awesome job throughout the game. We still have assignments that we can fix. Physically there were challenges there at times, a couple of critical mistakes, the turnover right before the half was partially an offensive line mistake when Jack got hit right as he was throwing. Overall their performance was outstanding. I was very happy, and I know coach McEndoo has slept a lot better the last couple of nights than he did prior to that game. I want to give him all the tribute that he deserves for getting that line prepared. That was a patchwork group of guys there, and they worked extremely hard. He did an awesome job of putting them all together and giving them the tools and the confidence they need to be successful. Their performance is still the high point of the game.”
Are you still excited to be at Montana State? How excited were you before the game?
“I’m always excited before every game. That’s just me. I’m sorry if I have a permanent smile on my face, but I happen to love what I do. I love coaching, and I told my wife, who’s been with me for all these 30 years almost of coaching these games, it didn’t feel any different than being out in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in front of 800 fans. It’s my team playing, our team playing, and it’s exciting. Now when I turned around and looked behind me, that was exciting, too, all those fans up in the stands. That was a great venue and it was thrilling before and after the game, to think you were there. But honestly, once kickoff starts and you start coaching, it’s a 100-yard field and that’s really, honestly, truly how it felt. And I think our guys played that way, too.”
The players looked comfortable running the new system, do you sense they felt that way?
“I think they did. We were very concerned on Thursday, that was probably one of the sloppiest Thursday practices I’ve ever witnessed prior to any game I coached. I was very concerned, Coach Svoboda was very concerned, we talked about it going down there, but Friday when we did our walk-through we got a break. The lightning came and we got to work out inside, and because of the privacy of the indoor facility we were able to actually run our opening script and some of our other offensive plays, and I think that helped us. The guys had a little edge, a little focus. Being on campus, having seen the stadium, they had a little added concentration that helped us prepare for the game. Then in the game I thought our execution was excellent. We tried to break the huddle with 15 seconds on the 25-second clock and be at the line with 10 seconds to go to make an audible if we need to, and we were getting out of the huddle at 18 or 19 seconds. That was excellent.”
On MSU’s two penalties
“That was really good. We talked a lot about it, but you never know how guys are going to respond until guys get out there in a game situation. Again, I need to find out with this football team if it was extra focus and concentration because of the setting, or if that’s just how it’s going to be. I hope it’s going to be how our team plays.”
Would you have received had you won the toss?
“We would have received. We thought that was the best advantage we had in the game, and we wanted to try to do exactly what we did. We knew there was about a 100% chance that we would receive, because they would probably defer and we knew we would receive. We knew that’s what we would do going in, and we hoped we would get a drive going and eat up the clock and shorten the game. That’s what you dream of, but to actually execute it was pretty special.”
What kind of reaction in the film room did you get from your hits on Stephen McGee?
Dane Fletcher: "They were cool. They (looked) harder than I thought they were going to. When I hit him I forgot about it, I was worried about the ball more than the actual hit itself. When you see them on film it really seems a little better than it really was."
What will practice be like this week?
DF: "We're bringing the same intensity to ever practice this week, we're having the same amount of practices, and treating it like any other game week. We're keeping our minds in the game and staying focused."
Does a team like Texas A&M expose your mistakes more than a team that's not as sound?
DF: "They exposed a lot of different aspects of our game, and that's going to definitely help us coming into the next game. We'll be sound hopefully by this Friday."
What will you do Saturday?
DF: "I'm not really sure right now."
How can you bring the same intensity to the next game?
DF: "I think we played well in the Texas A&M game. I don't think it's going to be too hard to keep the intensity up in this next week because it just shows how far we have come and how much farther we can come to be a successful team."
Opinion on the bye week?
DF: "We have a couple of guys down so it helps us in a way, but also it would be nice to get back on the field again and have that bye later in the season. Either way, you just go past it and go on with life."
How hard was it to get out of bed on Sunday morning?
DF: "More like Sunday afternoon. I wasn't really sore (Saturday) night, I cramped up a little on the plane ride home, but definitely (the next morning) I tried to get up and it was hard. It took like an hour to get all the way out of bed."
Are you looking forward to playing in front of the home crowd next week?
DF: "It's nice to go somewhere like Texas and have that many fans against you, but this is way better as far as (having the fans) on your side. That will help you in any kind of game."
SENIOR QUARTERBACK JACK ROLOVICH
What impression do you have from watching the A&M game film?
JR: “I think we showed some good things, but there are always things to work on. After any game I don’t think you can be too critical of yourself. After this game, there were plenty of mistakes. We did show some good things, but there are always things you can improve on.”
How much of Saturday was MSU’s mistakes, how much was A&M?
JR: “They were a good team, yeah, but I think we can really point the finger at ourselves. There were a lot of things we didn’t do right. Marching to that point in the red zone was good, but if you don’t put points on the board it doesn’t matter.”
Does the emphasis become finishing drives in the next two weeks?
JR: “Oh, yeah, for sure. I don’t doubt that at all. We did put up good numbers, I think we had more yards, time of possession, first downs. Typically you’d look at that and you would think we would win that game, but obviously the score doesn’t reflect that. I think we just have to finish.”
How would you rate yourself on the scramble late in the first half?
JR: “I was just playing out there, just playing backyard football. I could have thrown it away or thrown it a little sooner so we’d have a chance at a field goal or something like that. But the adrenaline was running, and you just have to learn from your mistakes.”
The team struggled at home some last year, do you feel a difference this year?
JR: “Last year is in the past. We’re not really thinking about it. I couldn’t tell you exactly why or what mentality we had that made us lost those games, but I think that as a whole mentally we have a different group this year and we’ll be ready to play.”
Is this year’s receivers group more balanced?
JR: “That keeps defenses off balance a little bit more, because last year they could double-team Mike (Jefferson) and stuff like that. A lot of it’s just making reads and finding the open guy. I don’t think we key on one receiver or anything like that, so it’s kind of nice.”
Did you feel MSU took what was given it on Saturday?
JR: “They didn’t blitz us much at the beginning of the game, they really only blitzed us the last couple of drives. They weren’t really giving away the deep ball, and their D-line was really good, so we knew we’d have to get the ball out quick.”
Were you comfortable running the offense Saturday?
JR: “Of course there’s growing pains and things to work on, but you don’t really know how it’s going to feel until you get out there and play. When you get out there you remember why you play this game. I really love it.”
Comment on the game’s first drive?
JR: “There was a lot of speculation before the game on the score and how good Texas A&M was going to be and how we were going to be with the new coaching staff and everything. I think with that first drive we put some confidence in the team and the people watching that, ‘Yeah, it’s Texas A&M, but we can do it.’”
What do you think of the bye week?
JR: “You don’t really think about it as a player. It’s just a bye week. I don’t think there’s a good or bad time to have a bye week. You just have to focus and look at it in a positive light as we’re going to have two weeks to prepare for Dixie State.”
Comment on playing a home game in two weekends?
JR: “The fans here are great. The whole community here is just awesome. When I was at Hawaii it was more rooting for football in itself, but here it’s a certain bond they have with the Bobcats. It’s great, and we really appreciate it.”
JUNIOR RECEIVER DEON TOLIVER
What was it like to play after missing the last few games of ’06?
DT: “It was a little fast at first, not playing in a real game for a while, but it slowed down for me and I was able to play how I used to. It was fun.”
Is your collar bone healthy?
DT: “I don’t really think about it. I thought about it before the game, falling on it, but once I got in there that was out of my head. I was just concentrating on playing hard and helping the team win.”
Do all the receivers feel there’s a chance they’re going to get the ball so they have to be ready?
DT: “We really didn’t know how it was going to go, who was going to get the most balls, who was going to get the most touches. We were just out there ready to play, and we were happy because we each got about four catches, me and Josh and Ty. We all are ready to step up.”
Does not having many drops boost the group’s confidence?
DT: “I think it’s a confidence booster, getting out there and doing what we had to do. There’s still a lot of things we can work on, especially myself. There’s a lot of stuff I can work on. But I think that really set the tone for the rest of the season.”
The receivers caught the ball well Saturday, is that the goal?
DT: “We always expect that, first, we catch the ball, and after that we concentrate on getting up the field.”
Will you hesitate to dive for the ball?
DT: “No hesitation. You might think about it before the game or something, but during the game it’s all adrenaline. I’ll jump for any ball. I’m not going to worry about it.”
Will preparation for Dixie State be any different?
DT: “I’m going to treat them just like I did Texas A&M. I was in watching film on Texas A&M since the beginning of fall camp. You don’t want to treat them like they’re below us or something, they’re a good team, too. We’ll watch film and try to attack their weaknesses.”
Does losing Saturday’s game make you hungrier next week?
DT: “I’m hungry all the time. I want to win every game. We did good against Texas A&M, but the whole team, we want to win this game a lot. We’ll have our fans there, and we definitely want to play well for our fans.”
MSU COACH ROB ASH
“I’ve watched the film quite a bit. Nothing beats having game film to watch. You can practice all you want, you can watch spring ball, last year, whatever, but you don’t know about your team until you don’t know about your team until you play a game and watch the tape. We’ve watched that extensively. I have an adage that I’ll use several times this year, which is when you watch the tape you’re never as good as you thought you were and you’re never as bad as you thought you were after games. I was happy with the effort, not with the score but with the effort generally coming out of the game. Watching tape there were probably more mistakes with execution and assignments in that game than I thought watching the game in person. The good news is we overcame those mistakes with a lot of effort and good performance in general, with guys hustling and trying to make plays. The other good news is that what we did see in terms of those mistakes are things that are correctible. Lots of assignment things that we can fix. That’s a very, very positive sign, that we played a reasonable game in a game where we made quite a few mistakes. We get those fixed and I think that bodes very well for the future, assuming we can get those fixed. And, I think we can.”
Were you happy with how this team competed?
“That was by far the best outcome of this game, this exercise, we found out that this group of guys will back down from no one, the circumstances of the game and the surroundings will not affect them, they’ll go play with discipline, they will play with great effort. Those are extremely positive characteristics of this group of guys. The only factor I’ve cautioned them about, which we have to be concerned with, is did we play at a level that mirrored the setting, with the competition we were playing, the stadium, the number of people there, and will that level fluctuate with the number of people in the stands and who the opponent is, or do we have a team that will play at that standard all the time. That’s obviously what we’re shooting for and that’s our quest for the next game. That’s what we’ll find out the next game, will we be as ready and as focused in front of 15,000 fans as we were in front of 80,000 fans.”
I have such love for the game of football, and such respect for the game of football, that the game deserves that kind of effort if there are no people in the stands. You need to play this game with your best emotional focus and your best commitment and effort no matter who’s watching and no matter who the opponent is. It’s not about all the external factors, it’s about the game. And I expect our guys to do that.”
On injuries to Aaron Mason and Brandon Hoffenbacker
“We’re expecting Aaron to be able to play against Dixie, and we think Hoffenbacker will be out for a few weeks. With Hoffenbacker, it’s a glass half full-half empty scenario. He’s going to miss a little bit, but he’s not out for the season. That’s the good news and bad news together. We get Chris Kolone back, he’s fine and (ready) to play and he’ll have his first action against Dixie. That’s a positive thing. We had to take Dan Ogden’s redshirt off in the middle of the game, or actually in the third quarter when Hoffenbacker got hurt. We had Dan on the trip, we were going to try to protect him, but we had to take that (red) shirt off.”
On DeAndre Green’s situation
“DeAndre’s situation is still up in the air.”
Do you work on what you’ve already put in this week, or on new things?
“This week will be a mixture. (Tuesday and Wednesday) will be in full pads, it will be like preseason camp all over again, a lot of fix-it situations, going back over things in the A&M game and trying to get those corrected. We’ll have some tough physical contact this week to try to keep our edge, some conditioning. There may be a few tweaks and add-ons. Only having the short time that we did in the preseason there are still things on both sides of the ball that we haven’t got installed yet, but we have to be a little careful. We want to build on what’s already in there and not try to add a lot new. Toward the end of the week we’ll look at Dixie a little bit because we can. We’ll get the tape in from their Adams State game and that’s the one game we’ll get to see, so we’ll have to start working on them. That will start Thursday and Friday, then we’ll come back and have a full week of preparation for them the next week.”
Will you use a three-tailback rotation?
“It’s nice to have three you can play. I really don’t know how that’s going to go. A lot of it has to do with how quickly Aaron gets back and what he looks like when he does get back. It’s just nice to know that Isaiah and Demetrius have the ability to play. That was one of the best outcomes of the game. I always try to find a positive in everything. I hated it that Aaron got hurt because he’s a good player and it would have been nice to have him there. And, I’m sure it was very disappointing to him. But Demetrius got a lot more carries because of Aaron’s injuries, and it helped us because now we know because he’s a guy we can put on the field very safely and he can do good things for us.”
On the receivers
“We’ve got to stop talking about them like it’s a surprise. They’re playing very well, and knock on wood it will continue. I’m very happy that we have good balance there. The guys are working hard after the catch. We’re getting the ball down the field some, and they’re going up and making plays.”
Evaluate the team’s execution
“Defensively we have to fit every play right every time. We just didn’t do that. It’s a gap control defense, that’s how you play the game. If you’re going to be sound on defense you have a guy in every gap, everybody fits things, you squeeze it to a linebacker, spill it to a safety, that’s how you’ve got to play. If you have 10 guys do it right and the 11ththguy overlaps in a different gap and they happen to run the ball there if they have a good player it’s going to be a big play. That’s how we got hurt numerous times. If you blitz and don’t keep the pocket contained the blitz is wasted. The guy just escapes out the side door. You can’t let those things happen, so there’s issues there. Offensively, there were running plays where we didn’t get a hat on a hat, there were reads that didn’t go in the right progression, there were route depths at nine yards that needed to be at 12 yards. Those kinds of things have to be fixed if we’re going to be any good. You watch it on tape, you see it happen, and you go back to the drawing board and fix it. That’s what this process is about. There are a lot of things to fix.”
Evaluate the kicking situation
“We’ve put Eric’s job on the line. Mike Sweeney is going to have a chance to compete for the job. We’ll chart them and do competitive kicks in practice and simulate game conditions the best we can in practice. We’ll look at operation times and we’ll look at accuracy and consistency and we’ll make a decision on who the kicker’s going to be a week from (Wednesday).”
On MSU’s kicking game
“You have to make them. That’s the kicker’s job. It’s our job as a team to convert those points. When you get down to the red zone you have to score. Our goal is to score 100 percent of the time inside the 25-yard line, and that’s Eric’s and Mike’s field goal range, we expect those kicks to be in if we settle for a field goal and don’t score a touchdown, which is obviously our first goal. It would be nice to take the pressure off them and score touchdowns, too. They’re both good kickers. That setting is tough, and it was the first game (as MSU’s place kicker) for Eric, I understand that. He’s going to be really good, he’ll be a fine kicker. He just needs some confidence. We need to put some pressure on him to simulate game situations. That’s why we put the opened the job up, to put a little edge into the competition this week.”
What are you going to do Saturday?
“I’m going to watch some games on TV. We gave the guys the day off, pending how they perform this week.”
On the team’s physical condition after A&M
“We’re OK now. We gave them all day off on Sunday, (Monday) all they did was a light lifting workout, a recovery workout, and some stretching and some striders, some running just to loosen them up. They’ve had two solid days to recover. There’ll be a guy or two that have to be limited from contact, but by far the majority of the guys are ready to go. We need to do this now so we can have another period to recover and be ready to go physically on the 15th.”
Did the O-line look as good on film as you thought Saturday night?
“The film definitely bore that out. The offensive line did an awesome job throughout the game. We still have assignments that we can fix. Physically there were challenges there at times, a couple of critical mistakes, the turnover right before the half was partially an offensive line mistake when Jack got hit right as he was throwing. Overall their performance was outstanding. I was very happy, and I know coach McEndoo has slept a lot better the last couple of nights than he did prior to that game. I want to give him all the tribute that he deserves for getting that line prepared. That was a patchwork group of guys there, and they worked extremely hard. He did an awesome job of putting them all together and giving them the tools and the confidence they need to be successful. Their performance is still the high point of the game.”
Are you still excited to be at Montana State? How excited were you before the game?
“I’m always excited before every game. That’s just me. I’m sorry if I have a permanent smile on my face, but I happen to love what I do. I love coaching, and I told my wife, who’s been with me for all these 30 years almost of coaching these games, it didn’t feel any different than being out in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in front of 800 fans. It’s my team playing, our team playing, and it’s exciting. Now when I turned around and looked behind me, that was exciting, too, all those fans up in the stands. That was a great venue and it was thrilling before and after the game, to think you were there. But honestly, once kickoff starts and you start coaching, it’s a 100-yard field and that’s really, honestly, truly how it felt. And I think our guys played that way, too.”
The players looked comfortable running the new system, do you sense they felt that way?
“I think they did. We were very concerned on Thursday, that was probably one of the sloppiest Thursday practices I’ve ever witnessed prior to any game I coached. I was very concerned, Coach Svoboda was very concerned, we talked about it going down there, but Friday when we did our walk-through we got a break. The lightning came and we got to work out inside, and because of the privacy of the indoor facility we were able to actually run our opening script and some of our other offensive plays, and I think that helped us. The guys had a little edge, a little focus. Being on campus, having seen the stadium, they had a little added concentration that helped us prepare for the game. Then in the game I thought our execution was excellent. We tried to break the huddle with 15 seconds on the 25-second clock and be at the line with 10 seconds to go to make an audible if we need to, and we were getting out of the huddle at 18 or 19 seconds. That was excellent.”
On MSU’s two penalties
“That was really good. We talked a lot about it, but you never know how guys are going to respond until guys get out there in a game situation. Again, I need to find out with this football team if it was extra focus and concentration because of the setting, or if that’s just how it’s going to be. I hope it’s going to be how our team plays.”
Would you have received had you won the toss?
“We would have received. We thought that was the best advantage we had in the game, and we wanted to try to do exactly what we did. We knew there was about a 100% chance that we would receive, because they would probably defer and we knew we would receive. We knew that’s what we would do going in, and we hoped we would get a drive going and eat up the clock and shorten the game. That’s what you dream of, but to actually execute it was pretty special.”
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