Army West Point Black Knights College Football Pregame Quote, 10/13/2020

Good afternoon. We’re getting prepared for this game at San Antonio coming off the win against The Citadel. I give The Citadel a lot of credit, Coach (Brent) Thompson did a great job preparing their team in particularly defensively. They took advantage of a couple of weeks to get ready for us and really bottled us up in a run game. Fortunately, we were able to make enough plays and hit a play action pass for a touchdown that gave us the lead that we needed.

I thought our defense played really, really well. They got put in a terrible position there at the end of they game that was nobody’s fault but mine. I was so frustrated with us not being able to run the ball as effectively as we have. So you know our first down play we tried to throw a play action where we got sacked. Then on third down we wanted to get some of that back and see if we could sustain the drive and hold on to the ball. It was a poor decision on my part, but our defense I thought played their butts off all day long. Our offense played hard. We just weren’t doing a very good job moving them sustaining blocks and missed a lot of opportunities. As I said, give credit to Citadel they have a tough football team, a really good staff. We are fortunate to have won and glad to have won.

We move on to this game in San Antonio against a very athletic team, Coach (Jeff) Traylor done a remarkable job this year in his first season. They are one of the few teams in the country along with us that have played five games, so they have a lot of game experience under their belt. I’m just so impressed with them and how athletic they are at every position, that’s across the board. We certainly have our hands full. I think just even impressed this past weekend and their effort against BYU who I think everybody recognizes they’re a really tough, physical football team, a good football team and they’re just toe-to-toe with them all day. We have a lot of work to do this week to get ready and hopefully we will be up for the task.

On his assessment offensively and defensively for San Antonio:

They’ve got not just the running back and the quarterback but a host of receivers, a big offensive line. They are a very good offense, and just that running back he’s enough to scare you just with what he can do. As you know running the football is not a one man show you have to have a great supporting cast and he does. Defensively they’re very athletic. Coach (Tyrone) Nix the defensive coordinator he’s a veteran, has a long time history and reputation in our profession and is one of the best defensive coaches in the country. He will have his team very well-prepared. He probably won’t have to worry much about the passing defense because that’s not who we are. We have to run the ball effectively if we are going to hope to have the chance to win and then use the running game to set up pass plays, that’s just our offense he knows that, that’s not any secret to anybody. They have a very good team, they got outstanding specialists, their kickers, returners. I am just overall very impressed with their football team.

On what improvements need to be made from last game:

I think just the obvious that we need to block and be able to sustain blocks in the running game. That’s an area where we need to improve — and we’ve done that very well at times this year. We didn’t do it particularly well on Saturday, but we’ve got to do that consistently if we’re going to be the offense that we want to be. And then just making good decisions about when to throw and who to throw it to, who we’re supposed to block when we need to break off a route, when we need to turn our eyes back when the that guy we’re responsible for is blocked in an exchange, that we get our eyes to the next defender. Just the typical, fundamental things in our offense that we’re going to work at every day and defensively ‚Äì being able to play good solid defense and not have those big plays trickle in there. Sometimes guys are just going to make a great play but having ourselves in a position at least to make a long ball like they threw on us on Saturday, a 50-50 ball, just be contested and they threw a great pass and the guy ran right by us. We’ve had some pass interference penalties that I think can be avoided ‚Äì one maybe being in a better position and two just some fundamental things. Those are all of the things that we’ll try and improve on and work on and really that’s built in to our practices each week.

On the difference between the UTSA team last year vs. this year:

They just look like they’re playing very confident football and playing like a team that expects to win ‚Äì playing fast, executing very well. They’ve been in some close ball games, they’ve won some close ball games and they’ve fallen short on some close ball games. The last two UAB — and the job Bill Clark’s done, they’ve got an outstanding football team and an established staff — as well as BYU and the kind of football team that they are. I’m just really impressed with the way they are playing.

On the time of possession battle:

That is certainly a goal of ours, just in general to try to control the football and keep it away from our opponent. When we’ve been able to do that, we’ve had a relative amount of success. It still counts the same if you score on one play or on 21 plays and we’ve had drives of one play and we’ve had drives of 21 plays. It still counts the same. But to be able to possess the ball and be able to hang on to it and keep it away from the opponent and giving them fewer opportunities, it benefits us. I think that’s the philosophy of everyone that runs this offense and certainly teams that run the football and try to control the ball and control the clock, it’s with that in mind. So, what we’ve got to do is finish drives with points, preferably touchdowns, and it really doesn’t matter if we have it five times or 15 times in a game. If we maximize the opportunities that we have and limit the possessions of the opponent, it gives them less opportunities to score. We’re just going to continue to try and do what we want to do best and that’s run the ball and control the ball and keep it away from our opponent ‚Äì and hopefully we’ll be able to do that on Saturday. We’re going to have a lot of competition with an athletic, well-coached defense in San Antonio, so it will be a great test for us.