Opening Statement:
“When you look at the review of the Florida game, obviously, everyone in the program is disappointed. Starting offensively, some positives: I felt like we had four offensive linemen that played winning football in that game, and that’s the first time since we’ve been here that we’ve had that. These guys continue to progress up front which is a positive sign. We have to get more guys that can do that. This week Chris Akporoghene is back and is having an opportunity to practice. He’s another guy that we can possibly plug in there and will play some time here in the future.
“There’s one thing that we have to do offensively, and that’s that we can’t turn over the football. On Saturday we had four turnovers, and in the first four games we’ve had eight, and we’re 2-for-8 on fourth down, so that’s six times we turned over the ball. Going into this season, we said we need to have minimal turnovers and we need to be opportunistic on defense. We had a couple of balls that we would’ve liked to have back. We had a chance earlier in the game in the red area to stick one in and didn’t do that. Twice, we had a couple of guys running open for touchdowns, and we have to be able to get these guys the ball, and we see that, we know that.
“Defensively, if you look at the game, I thought the guys fought really hard and played well together. We’ve kind of done our quality control for the first four games. If we’ve given up a play, we’ve got one guy that may not have played the right technical part or may have made a mental error there. Statistically, it’s a lot of really good, but the plays that we’ve left out there we have to eliminate. We have yet to give up a play because of lack of ability. And in the last two games, we have gotten eight turnovers. We have to continue to do that. We had the chance to get a ninth one on Saturday, but we were out of bounds.
“Going into this week, what do we do? Our guys have gone to work and we’ve had two really good spirited practices with guys working extremely hard. Last year we had an off week at this time and we improved a lot as a football team. So, we kind of go back to the basics, and that’s what we’re working on. As a coaching staff, you sit there and you look at what we’ve done well in the first four games. Maybe what we haven’t done so well, why are we not doing it well? Is there a personnel issue and are there guys that maybe have not played to the standard that you’ve expected? It’s getting into the fifth week of the season, so maybe they’re starting to get where they’re ready to play now. It’s a great opportunity to continue to improve, and our guys are doing that.
“One of the hot topics in college football is the transfer portal, and we’ve had some guys enter the transfer portal. I’ve said this before: in the first year of our program we had very few guys leave because there was hope. In year two, as more guys get into the program you see that more guys want to leave because they want to have an opportunity to play, and I get it. I think you’ve seen that all over college football. I sit here every night fielding phone calls from people saying, ‘my son is going to be in the transfer portal’, or ‘we have a player from our team that’s going to the transfer portal.’ It really changes the dynamic of college football, and I’m not sure anybody has a grasp on it yet. It’s there, you deal with it, and you coach the guys that are within your program.”
On how he is managing the quarterbacks this week and moving forward:
“It’s just like every position. In every position on our team, there’s been times this year that we have played really good football, but we’re looking for consistency and that’s with every position. Every week we play the guys that give us the best opportunity to give us success, and we’ll continue to do that. Jarrett has not been as good as he would like to be at certain times but has also made some really good throws and some really good decisions. It’s no different from the defensive line, linebackers or secondary. Everybody in our program has to raise their level. We have to be more consistent and create the right habits, so they show up on game day.”
On Quavaris Crouch at running back and what he brings to the table:
“The first thing is, he weighs 248 pounds and the other running backs weigh 205 pounds. When its third-and-one or fourth-and-one, that would be an option. It’s something that we talked about doing when we recruited him. He rushed for 3,000 yards during his junior year of high school, so the guy can play running back. He came here to play linebacker with the thought that he’d have an opportunity on short yardage and goal line. He got a little banged up in fall camp, so we didn’t have an opportunity to work on that package, because you worry about ball security. It took us a little bit of time to get it in there, but hopefully moving forward we can do that.”
On Jarrett Guarantano’s errant throws:
“There’s a lot that goes into the quarterback position. I played it in high school and coached it a lot as I was a younger coach. It starts with protections. A lot of the time, we put that on the quarterback to make sure we get the protections right. So, he has to know where he’s protected from and he’s done a nice job of that most of the year. For every pattern, whether it’s a progression read, or middle-field open, or middle-field closed, you have a starting place and you have an ending place. You have to know where you’re starting and what your key is. That’s every single pass play. You have to do all of that with the timing mechanism and understand that. There have probably been some times where we didn’t start in the right spot, maybe we need to speed up our footwork or some things like that, or maybe there was a little bit of pressure and you couldn’t step up in the pockets. Sometimes what you see on film when you go back there and stand behind the offensive linemen, if you can get a little bit of push, sometimes it makes it tough on a quarterback. I know for us defensively that’s one of the things. If you make guys throw from out of the pocket and they don’t have the windows to step up in there, it makes it more difficult for them.”
On if the players that entered the transfer portal (Will Ignont, Shanon Reid, Jacquez Jones) have left the team:
“They have left.”
On which offensive lineman has shown improvement so far this season:
“Darnell Wright and Wanya Morris have continued to work hard and improve. Are they where they need to be yet? No. But they continue to work hard. Jackson Lampley has worked hard in practice. Chris Akporoghene continues to improve. Brandon Kennedy has gotten better every week because he is a fifth-year guy. Brandon has not played a lot of ball because he has been hurt for most of his career. His play on Saturday was his best game. Trey Smith continues to improve, which you would think he would as the game goes. Riley Locklear is another guy that continues to improve. Our guys are working hard and getting better up front, every one of them. We have to continue to do that and build upon that.”
On if he has considered redshirting any of his players to save a year of eligibility after what happened at Houston:
“Well we did it last year. I don’t know the circumstances (at Houston), so it is hard for me to comment on that. I know last year when we had four games left, there were several guys on our team: Kivon Bennett, Kurott Garland, Kingston Harris, Greg Emerson, Cedric Tillman. There were some guys there that we elected not to play in the last few games so they would gain another year of eligibility. So, I don’t know his (Houston’s QB) circumstance, but I know their (Houston’s) circumstance.
“But before we did it, I talked to them (the players) and I would call their parents to make sure we were all on the same page. I felt like it would give them an opportunity if they wanted that fifth year down the road, they would be thankful for it. I look at it like this, I have coached a lot of guys that made no impact on their team that they represented for four years and in their fifth year they became starters and they play in the NFL today.
“Circumstances, whether its physical or mental maturity, people kind of grow and develop at different times in their life. So that is why it is important to keep young guys in your program to have an opportunity to have success one day. Unfortunately, it is different now than when we grew up. Now you can put something on social media and in three seconds everyone in California can see what you put out there. When we were growing up, everything was spread by word of mouth. It took a long time to get it spread.”
On what he looks at in the quality control analysis and how often he does it:
“We do it after every game. But when we have an off week here, we play with regular personnel usually against regular people, whether it is two tight ends or one fullback, but nobody really plays with a fullback anymore. But we play nickel personnel, then we play nickel rabbits personnel versus 11 personnel on offense. We have some of the same calls. We play dime rabbits and a couple other personnel against things on third down, so you want to see what you are having success doing. When we are playing a four-man rush and a middle-field zone, what is the success per play on run and pass? If you are playing a four-man rush and playing quarter-quarter halves or quarter quarters, or whatever, you go through every call that you have and you see if it has been a good call for us or has it not. If it’s not, how come? Are the numbers skewed because of one play? Maybe it has been a good call for us, but based on the numbers, it is not just because of this one play. You do that during the season. You do it after the season. It helps you with personnel. Maybe who is playing well, who’s not, what’s the best personnel you have to move for the rest of the year. You do it on both sides of the ball.
“You look at the explosive plays that we’ve have given up and why. What was the call when we have given them up and who’s the personnel? Who gave them up and why? You look at turnovers. For us, how are we creating turnovers? And you do it in all three phases. We also have to look back at our personnel. Where are people at right now?
“We have lots of guys that have not played a lot of ball for us yet. You might see them a little bit in the first couple of games, but they are inching up there getting ready to play and to contribute, which will give us more depth. It’s interesting, we have met with every group of players the last two days, it’s something we do a lot. We have like 115 guys in our program, but 80 of them are freshmen or sophomores. So, this is a wonderful week for these guys to continue to grow and develop and improve as a football player and to take that next step, so if they have been playing, maybe they can play a little better or they put themselves in position ready to contribute.”
On what the status is of Dominick Wood-Anderson:
“His foot is fine. One of the big things here is academics. When guys come here, the number one thing is to get your degree, so their motto is school then football. So, Dominick is a guy, this is his last year and he wants to have an opportunity to graduate, so this is a good time to do that. He has played really good football for us this year. It is also a great opportunity to take Princeton Fant, Jackson Lowe, Sean Brown, Hunter Salmon and get those guys a ton of work.”
On if he believes the team has enough talent to be competitive in the SEC and what needs to happen on the field to see it:
“It’s not hard to figure out. In the three games that we have lost, we had an opportunity to win two of them. The first one we had five turnovers, whether it was three turnovers that we had or two turnovers on downs on fourth-and-one. And we only created one turnover. So, we are minus four in the turnover margin there. It’s hard to win that way. We probably left some plays out there on both sides of the ball.
“Our football team is 100 times better than it was this time last year. Our guys are working hard. We are stronger and more physical. But when it comes to success on winning the football game, you can’t turn the ball over and you have to create turnovers, and that is something that has hampered us in our three losses. Our guys are working hard and we’re getting better on the offensive front. Our tight ends are playing winning football. We have to get the ball to our skill players and be more consistent there.
“Defensively, it’s unusual if you look at our defense, with what we call explosive plays – gains of 20 yards or more, 15-yard runs or 20-yard passes – and probably throughout our four games, I think we have given up 11 or 13. For a team that is 1-3, that is not a whole lot. If you have looked at us, we have not given up big chunks, we’ve given up seven to 14-yard plays. What does that mean? That means we need to be a little stronger when we tackle and knock folks back. Maybe our coverage is not tight enough in some scenarios. We have created some negative plays. We have to develop a little more pass rush. When we rush, we are just four guys so that we don’t put so much stress on the back end. So, all those things we are looking at ways to improve.”
On the division of quarterback reps:
“I think we have to change the reps. We have to do that. There’s no secret, we have to get better production out of that position, just like we do for all of them. We have to give these guys an opportunity and this is a good opportunity to do that this week.”
On young players understanding that the best player each week in practice will play:
“I’m sure it probably is (difficult to understand). Probably most of them were the better players on their team in high school. They probably played the same amount and it didn’t matter how they practiced. That’s why you don’t see as many freshmen play at a high level. It’s rare that you see it. It’s usually about this time of the year that more and more freshmen show up, and that’s on every team. What you see as a coach a lot of times is you see the potential in fall camp, then school starts and it’s the grind and maybe they disappear a little bit and in the fifth, sixth, seventh week they start showing back up and get their feet back under them. I think we played 17 guys and we might play more than that. We’ll continue to push those guys out there.”
On balancing rest and quality work during the bye week:
“The rest part isn’t a problem, the thing that we have to look at is when you talk about depth at certain positions. We don’t have the depth that we need at certain positions, so you have to be careful there. But for the rest part, these guys are fine. As far as recruiting, we do that every single day. We’ll go out on the road on Friday and do that. We’ll give them two days off on Friday and Saturday and we’ll be here on Sunday getting ready for Georgia.”
On offensive line protection when throwing the ball downfield:
“I think our guys have really done a nice job. Could we improve? Sure we could. We need to be a little bit firmer inside. We probably need to be more consistent outside. But we haven’t had to keep a bunch of guys inside to chip or use seven-man protections. We’ve done that some, but our guys have worked hard in continuing to improve there and to me it shows up on Saturdays.”
On Theo Jackson’s improvement and Bryce Thompson’s first game:
“Theo works hard every day. He’s a smart guy and he knows what to do, so he puts himself in the right spots. He gives himself a chance to have success. He’s a good communicator in the back end and he plays with some toughness. I thought he tackled well on Saturday in space. He missed one tackle down on the goal line but made some plays on the ball in the back end. Bryce played better as the game went, which is expected. He hasn’t been in a competitive game, so he got better as the game went.”
On the team’s level of confidence:
“To me, when we lose a game — doesn’t matter wherever I’ve coached — it hurts. I haven’t been used to losing very many of them, but it hurts pretty bad. I think sometimes you can get numb to losing if it happens over and over again, maybe you get used to it. That’s something in our program where you have lots of guys that aren’t used to losing, and it hurts them. I’m not saying the guys in our program are that way, but I do think that can happen. I can tell you this: I’ve said all along that I like this group of guys. The guys work extremely hard. There’s lots of things where we need to coach them up better, we need to play a little better, we need to be a little more opportunistic on both sides of the ball. We don’t need to shoot ourselves in the foot. But our guys are working hard, and they’ll continue to do that. I don’t see any quit in this group. These guys, I think, are fighters. We have to keep them healthy, so they have a chance to fight. That’s one of the things this week where we give them enough reps to improve, but at the same time don’t go out there and lose five guys in one day where we don’t have enough guys to play.”
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