UTEP Miners College Football Pregame Quote, 10/17/2022

We’ll get started here. Talk a little bit just about where our team is at this point and where we are moving forward. We went through the first seven weeks, which is really a long, strenuous stretch for our football team magnified by the fact that we started off on July 27th. I think (that) is when we reported and went seven straight weeks and had some really tough contests and opening up with a conference game. Those two back-to-back road games leaving the state definitely was a difficult task for our football team. And so, I speak about that because I think our team needed (the bye).

The open week came at a perfect time for our football team. I feel like we got a lot of good work in last week with the guys. We got in at a smart, efficient pace with trying to serve two things in getting a head start on our last five games of the season, A, and then B, getting them a chance to get a little bit of rest and get ourselves more mentally healthy as well as physically healthy. Then taking the second part of the last couple of days of the week, Thursday afternoon, Friday, Saturday, and really saturating our recruiting all across.

We sent four coaches into California JC’s, had multiple coaches into Texas and then into the Kansas and Mississippi Junior Colleges as well. So got a lot of good work and the guys did a nice job. I think we’re even ahead of where we’ve been in the past with that stage of things, which I think is important for us as well, to try to maximize our time there.

As we go through this week and go through last week, obviously you want to clean up the things you’re not doing well. There’s been heavy emphasis on us to clean up on finishing drives. I think that’s going to be important for us down these last five games that we finish drives at a high rate. I think we’re built to do that because we can run the football well. So, I think we should be more efficient in the red zone. I think we just need to work towards doing that. We’re spending more time there, putting more emphasis, trying to have the best schemes out there for our guys to execute and then executing the schemes at a high level.

And then winning the turnover margin. The things that have kept us from getting wins in the games that we’ve lost is losing the turnover margin. So that’s a focus for us as well.

Getting a third receiver to step up is really important for us as well. We have plenty of talent. I mean, our receiving crew’s got lots of talent. There’s just some young guys there that have to step up and get their practice focus to where it needs to be so their level during the games is high enough to allow us to have success in games. And like I said, there’s plenty of talent for us to do that as well.

Those are the areas of emphasis, to minimize giving up the big plays. We don’t want to give up big plays. We want to create more big plays. Last year we created a lot of big plays and did a lot of things that way to get our yards per completion at a high level. So, I thought that was a positive.

I’ve gone back and watched just tape of last season, obviously watched just us playing some of the opponents that are coming up. I do feel like as I watch our team perform right now in a lot of areas, I think we’re a better football team, a much better football team as I compare how we’re executing. So, I’m very excited about the last five weeks as some of our younger players have got more and more experience at some of the positions where we’ve had to bring those guys along, whether it was due to injury or just losing some guys to graduation. So, I’m really looking forward to our football team having the opportunity now to play three of our last five games at home and having one more open week ahead of us in this five-week stretch. So, I think it’s set up really good for us.

We just need to take care of business, play good home football, which we’ve been able to do over the last three seasons. We’ve been able to defend our home turf pretty well. That’s going to be important for us with these three games coming up and then obviously two road games, but they’re in the state of Texas so the trips won’t be as difficult for our team. So, I like the way the schedule is laid out. We just need to take advantage of it.

Obviously, it just starts with one game at a time, and Florida Atlantic definitely is a team that’s got lots of physical talent. They’ve got good size up front on their offensive line. They got two really talented running backs, a good group of wide receivers and a quarterback that’s very athletic and is really improved as a quarterback throughout his last two years.

Then defensively, they play a lot of guys on defense, they rotate a lot of defensive linemen, they rotate through their linebackers, they’ve been rotating their secondary. I mean, they play as many guys as anybody that we’ve faced all year because they’re able to get that kind of talent down in the state of Florida. They have a lot of talent all across the board, across their defense. It’ll be a challenge for us, but one that we need to be up for and play really good football.

We’ve proven that when we play good football, we can play with anybody on our schedule. So, we just need to, like I said, do the things that I talked about, get better at those things, improve on those things, and we’ll have a really balanced football team.

On getting off to better starts in games:

That’s probably something I didn’t hit on that I wanted to hit on. It’s something that we got to be better at and that’s pretty obvious. Our first-quarter effort hasn’t been good, and I think it would definitely be a positive for us to do that. I think we might change strategies on what we do. We’ve been a heavy defer (team) and letting them take the ball first. I’m not sure if we’ll do that moving forward. I still got to evaluate. That’s a little bit based on weather at the time of kickoff. But I do feel confident that our offense can maybe take the ball first and maybe generate a lead first for us. I think that would be very helpful for us. And then we got to be smart about not turning the ball over early. I think that’s one of the things (factoring into slow starts), that we’ve got to be smart with the football. We got to do what we do best, which is run the football on offense and minimize turnovers. And I think that’ll help our start. I’ve been involved in seasons where you might not be good at one quarter, might not be good in another. There’s not a whole lot of ways to change that except for just do what you do best in those type of situations. So, we might tweak a little bit of our strategies there, but it’s definitely important, very important for us to get off to faster starts.

On cutting down on turnovers:

Yeah, I think we need to be more patient, and it is an area of emphasis. I just think be more patient no matter what happens, no matter what the score of the game is. If we happen to fall behind early and don’t have a great first quarter, which we haven’t really started well this year, if we don’t start well, just stay true to what we do and be patient with what we do and don’t force things. I think that’s what’s led to some of the turnovers, just trying to do too much, if we fall behind and trying to catch up with one play instead of just doing it with a patient mindset. So that’s a big part of what we’re talking about right now.

On if he’s talked to the team about needing three wins to become bowl-eligible:

Not at all. Not at all. But is it there? Yes. I mean, it’s obviously, (it would) be a really neat accomplishment for us to be able to do that back-to-back years, but we can’t do that until we win this one. We can’t start thinking about. So that’s really important as a football team to be able to lock into what we’re doing. But obviously, it’s there for us. If we can just play good football down the stretch, the opportunity is right there in front of us, but we can’t do it unless we play good football. Our league is so evenly matched that whoever plays best on that given gameday is going to win the game. So, it’s going to be important for us to improve on the things we need to improve on and keep doing the things we’re doing well and get better at those things as well. So, we really do have to take the 1-0 mentality to what we’re doing right now.