Boise State Broncos College Football Pregame Quote, 09/05/2023

Well welcome guys. We we started off this week ‚Äì really you know, for us a week starts on a Sunday ‚Äì as we move forward and learn from the first experience. Obviously watching the film, there’s plenty of things we can grow from. Naturally going from week one the week number two in any season, there is always an opportunity for growth and to make a big jump. We had a very efficient Sunday and am excited to see the players around the facility this morning and today, getting started on the next opportunity which brings another Power Five opponent in our first home game right here at Albertsons Stadium. So we will work diligently through today and create a plan that we’re going to be able to make simple and concise to the players in all three phases so that we can be more consistent as we spoke about after the game on Saturday. There were plenty of opportunities for us there where we were in rhythm in our last opportunity where we played, you know, in character, but we definitely have to clean up some of the things where we made mistakes in that first opportunity, which is very correctable stuff. As we turn on the film and watch it’s basic fundamentals, some things that will keep us in rhythm being on the same page as we always talk about winning the pre snap and communicating, to get ourselves in rhythm and to keep ourselves in rhythm. So again, we had a very efficient Sunday. I like where the team is at right now they came back yesterday and worked and again is already in the facility this morning, on their day off, getting squared away with some stuff academically and obviously again preparing for the next opportunity.

Both Teubner and Jeanty, after the game, you know told us, you know, hey, you know, this is not acceptable. We have to we have to get their Teubner said you know, hey, we’re not gonna quit fighting. How pleased were you with kind of response for the guys after such a tough loss?

Yeah, I mean, I will say this. And I’ve already said it, like, I love this team. We’ve got we got some unbelievable guys. Even leaving the game, we didn’t need to watch the film to know like some of the things that we can and we need to be more consistent with. That’s the approach this team has had and I’m so excited about that. Obviously that’s why I say we had a very efficient and productive Sunday and moving into a Monday and I can’t wait to get back on the field tomorrow and get rolling.

Feels like this is kind of out of the frying pan and into the fire here and got another talented quarterback this week. How do you feel? Or what is your assessment of UCF’s kind of dual threat quarterback?

Yeah, there’s no question there’s another dynamic quarterback in the second week that has a lot of personnel, a lot of talent and a lot of speed around him. Going to play another offense that is was very, very productive in the first week and is coming out of the first week is the number one offense you know in terms of yards and put up a lot of points in the first game, but we see a quarterback who is very efficient through the air within their plan of attack and in the pass game, and is one of the fastest players on the field as well. He’s proven to do that over the course of the last two years in terms of numbers. He is obviously a number in the run game that you got to account for then obviously in the passing game, being able to extend or turn a pass play into a run play with his explosiveness.

If in a lot of ways it’s kind of like you guys in the run game two great running back to a dual threat quarterback, I mean, how do you what’s kind of the plan of attack against them?

The number one deal is we’re gonna get a lot of offense, okay, in terms of the amount of formations and the motions in the pre snap and how those formations change. So it’s really it’s going to come down to being exceptional in the pre snap with identifying being able to leverage formations, move ahead of the movers in terms of our communication and knowing the adjustments and where our eyes are going so that we can handle the numbers. That brings a potential for triple option numbers and being able to handle the quarterbacks number within the run game.

The way your offensive line played, I mean, I don’t think they had a penalty, you guys averaged nearly five yards of carry, only give up one sack. How do you how do you feel like that? That group

For the first quarter and up until nine minutes into that second quarter we were in character and we were playing in rhythm. It wasn’t perfect by any means but we were doing a good job at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. We want to find a way to create more pressure on the quarterback defensively but on the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball we played pretty well. And there was a gap in there in that second quarter of about seven minutes where we fell out of character. We’ve got to be able to have that next play mentality where we snap right back next play, and focus on the plan and execute our responsibility. And ultimately, that starts with us as coaches and making sure that we don’t have those lapses in how we prepare how we train, and get our guys ready. Because up until nine minutes in the second quarter against the number 10 team in the nation, we’re winning nine to seven. And then we gave up 21 points, we fell out of rhythm on offense, we had some three and outs and an interception. Those are things that we can fix. We knew that coming out of the game, but when you go back and watch the film it is very evident, they are very controllable things that we can, that we’ve already started to work on

38 yards rushing, 20 carries, I mean, 4.9, and the longest one from scrimmage was 13 yards. Like that’s very consistent in the run. What did you see after watching the film and digesting everything? What’s your confidence level in this running game right now?

I was excited about how our O line played. And obviously, it’s not just the O line, it’s the tight ends, it’s the wide receivers blocking as well. But to be able to see the way we played against that defensive front last week, what we were able to do. We had two freshmen playing a lot of football in there, then with the guys that have played a lot of football. We’ve said all along, we liked the way the leaders are building the mentality and creating an identity. It’s going to be no different this week. UCF has a talented, big, athletic front. So we’re going to have a huge challenge again. It’s going to carry over into this week and this week it’s going to demand us to even be better than we were last week, given the challenges we had. But I like where we’re at, and what we can build off of in the run game. And having a good plan to make sure that we can use the run game to keep us on track and keep us in rhythm.

You opened 2021 with UCF. What similarities, differences between that UCF team and this one?

Offensively, there’s some similarities. Different quarterback, I would say that they’ve gotten some speed into the critical areas. I mean, there’s speed everywhere at their skill positions, or running back positions. So from the from the structure from what we’ve seen last night, and this morning, there’s a lot of things that are similar. Again, there’s a lot of offense, Gus [Malzahn] has done a great job of putting together this package within his offense and has been very successful everywhere he’s been. Hinshaw has done a really good job. I mean, you can see what he’s done with a philosophy and he’s been a part of this before so he knows it, and they were clicking on all cylinders last week.

Look online of the tickets, it seems like there’s a decent amount of tickets still left for Saturday. I mean, how badly do you need to a packed house? For a big game like this? Yeah,

There’s no question, we get this opportunity to have a talented team, a Power Five team coming in like this. And to be able to feel Albertsons Stadium ‚Äì that home field advantage and to be able to have it loud and to be able to play in front of Bronco Nation here. It’s a big deal.

We made a lot of talk about so the last couple years about the home record here and the standard there of winning on The Blue and stuff what I know, that’s obviously the emphasis to get back to that, but how is there anything you’re doing differently? You’re just trying to how do you get back to making this a place that nobody wants to come in and play?

Well, I think the number one thing is always just focusing on the preparation, you know, and nderstanding what it looks like to prepare diligently. Obviously I said that starts with us and making sure we’re squared away on what it looks like in all three phases. It really starts, again, with our preparation, even on our day off on a Monday, and the urgency and the focus and the diligence that goes into preparing. That’s what it’s always been about. And then it creates a confidence and a mentality then, when Game Day comes along, to be able to protect The Blue.

You see it maybe because it will be darker against but just the all the new lights and the new scoreboard and all this stuff that the administration is trying to do to improve the atmosphere and just everything that’s going on here. What’s your take on all that and what the game day environments going to be? Like?

Yeah, there’s no question. I mean, you know, our administration has done a great job, not only within Albertsons Stadium, of creating and improving the game day atmosphere, they have in a lot of our other sports as well. Our hat’s off to JD [Boise State Director of Athletics Jeramiah Dickey] and the work that he’s done and that he continues to do. I mean, it’s JD ‚Äì he is a tireless worker when it comes to those things. So it’s exciting. We’re excited for Bronco Nation to come see and be a part of this first game. Getting this thing to be a sell out would be a huge deal.

Markell Reed didn’t play, I think, until the second half, do you anticipate that he’ll play more against UCF? 

There’s a progression that we want to make sure that we stay on given the course of his return to play. This is a long season, right, and making sure that we build and we grow into this thing. Then, as we as we continue to progress throughout the year, we’ll continue to see more and more.

You go back and you look at the way that your receivers, how do you kind of assess their performance? And in certain situations, or how much you need them to go up and go get it at times? 

There’s no question and very much so like we just spoke about, it’s not just the wide receivers. It’s the overall level of consistency. You get in those moments right there and you get that experience of going against a team, like we did last week, and having an understanding of how we competed at certain times, how we made plays and how we had explosive plays. Stefan Cobbs had a big catch down the field. E-Mac [Eric McAlister] had one on the sideline, where he toe taps. Now we need the consistency of bringing that together. Because there were there were lapses, there were lapses where we had some drops, and again, those are very correctable things. It comes down to focus and keeping the priority on getting the ball in our hands. Then what we do with it after then, obviously, that’s going to help us. So those are the things that we get into with these games, and we’ve got a schedule where we are going to play elite teams, week-in and week-out. It’s going to be a priority that we control the things that are very controllable.

On that when you guys went for two on the weird formation there, what, what was wrong? I didn’t was there actually a penalty or the refs missed that or what? Well,

There was, within that can’t move our feet. It appeared that one of the guys had slightly moved his foot. So they called us on that. But we’re not going to stop. We’re not going to stop with creativity and finding our opportunities to create difficult situations.

The seccondary from last year to this year, I mean, last year season opener, you got you know, you got a lot of a lot of passing yards against Oregon State came back and let them out in Weston passing defense, What lessons do you take from last year? To kind of say, hey, you know, there’s to turn this thing around.

Yeah, there’s no question. That’s the biggest part about that, about any first game is just the growth that comes from it, regardless of who you’re playing. We got to see exactly where we are at, and what are the things that we can continue to do better, and it was no different last year. We go right back to the most basic fundamentals, the emphasis and the things that we need to do to be more consistent. To create a clear and concise plan as to exactly what it is we’re doing, and then building in the standard of which we need to operate every single day at practice. So it becomes reaction, it becomes habit. We’ve got a group that we know that cares. We got a coaching staff that cares about these guys, and we’re looking forward. That’s football ‚Äì where you’re at in the first week is definitely where you’re not in the second week and not the third and so on.

You want Taylen to run more against Washington, are they doing something defensively, that kind of limited that? 

I think that most teams are going to have a game plan to make sure that that quarterback number is defended. ASo at times, there’s going to be opportunities and other times there’s not going to be based off of what a defense is working to take away. I’ll say in the last game, there were over 10 plays called that were read type plays for the quarterback. And so it really comes down to what we have in in terms of the structure and what a defense is doing.

And you mentioned the word confidence. What ways have you and your staff used in the past maybe to build it up? Maybe build it back? Certainly with a big opponent coming in?

It’s ingrained into the process. You’re going to learn from each one of these experiences that we have. It’s a season that involves growth from week to week, day to day, it all goes into the process. Not only how we prepare our players, but how we prepare a game plan in terms of how we teach it and how we implement it and then being able to go and execute that together collectively throughout the course of the week. In this game, that is the only real way to gain that confidence and it obviously leads to the mentality that you can play with on game day.

You know, I know that after the game you guys were mentioning, you know, moving eyes, right a place at times. How do you feel like your three step communication was, I mean, especially the first half of the was part of felt like it was? Really, it seemed like it was all right.

The defensive side of the ball, I mean, we forced them to punt three times. We forced them to punt three times there in the first quarter into the second quarter. Then there were a few lapses within that communication that I control that we always stress. That’s where it starts ‚Äì eliminating explosive plays starts with that. So, again, there’s very controllable things that we will emphasize, that we will build into patterns and build into the expectation the standard of everything we do from the meeting rooms to the walkthroughs to the actual team reps within practice.

Well, nation as the what was going on with the cleats or the slipping, you know, we’ve, 

We’ve dug into the that because as you watch the film, it was very evident and clear. You turn on the film, there was a lot of sliping going on in the field. It’s always about what you can control. Then we focused on, as a staff, where our feet are, when we’re transitioning, where we’re changing direction. Those will be a huge emphasis. But otherwise, we’ve worn those cleats before, obviously leading up through fall camp and the prep and stuff like that. It’s not the first time those guys have put those cleats on. We’re working to make sure that we’re not in that that situation again, because it was a fair amount in all three phases of the game, whether it was on kickoff coverage, whether it was blitzers, rushing near the quarterback and turn in an edge. Our feet were sliding out from underneath us, wide receivers coming out of breaks, DBs coming out of breaks.

You bring typically one pair of cleats or two or what’s kind of the standard.

It’s not like the olden days where you can unscrew ‚Äì that’s years and years ago. Nike makes one one pair of cleats now and you know, the bottoms are pretty consistent for what it is, for that plane surface.

Does U-W have new turf or anything like that. He said, again, you don’t have any turf or anything. I mean, like it was no, you don’t want to slip in. Right that much. It seems like

We got to work on the things that we can control. That’s our patterns of movements, how we change direction and things like that. So that will be the emphasis for us and making sure that within our movements, our feet are underneath our hips., feet before eyes and making sure that we’re doing everything we can.

We know about UCF’s offense. What about their defense? The numbers coming out of Kent State were pretty impressive.

It’s a big, physical, fast defense. Now, they got some length in the secondary and we already spoke about the defensive front. They’re disruptive. They got some guys back from that front last year, they held their opponent to six points, and really limited amount of yardage, under 250 yards as a whole. So they were pretty good in their first opportunity. And there’s some matchup things that we have to be very aware of.

I think of UCF as a program and just what they’ve done the last couple of decades and obviously follow up kind of in Boise State’s footsteps with some of those big wins and undefeated seasons, and then obviously parlayed that into the Big 12. For a while it was kind of two programs in the Group of Five everyone was looking at. How do you look at where they’re at what they’ve done? And you know how you guys obviously are trying to be on that level?

As a big picture outlook on college football, they’ve done a great job of growing, not just the football program. Over the last decade they have done a really, really good job. I mean, they’ve had tremendous growth and what they’ve been able to do, but their other sports have as well.

Just the D line in general. I mean, they had some well, it seemed like he has had good pressure early in the game Pat trailed off, obviously, run game you didn’t get to see much from but just overall how

That was one thing that is going to be a huge component of what we’re facing. The number one rush offense ‚Äì they ran the ball for 389 yards last game. So while there wasn’t a lot of rushing attempts, we felt like we played physical at the line of scrimmage with our defensive front. We had some guys in there that were playing a considerable amount of time for their first time. The first play of the game ‚Äì it was a run play and the way we attacked the line of scrimmage, we got to TFL there on that first play. It was exciting to see and we continued on. Again, how we find our ways to create pressure on the quarterback is always going to be at a premium.

The way James [Ferguson-Reynolds] played I think after the last scrimmage you expressed your excitement with the way that he was punting the ball not only to average what he did, but to limit returns to a How impressive was

Yeah, 47 net. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty elite, that’s more than good, that’s pretty elite. So now being able to continue to do that and find ways to mix the windows up on our punt team in terms of the formations and things like that punt return teams got a handle, it’s always going to be a premium on the snap-punter operation. So the growth that we saw there from last year with James, and now being able to continue to build off of that, but that was a huge part in the first game of flipping some field position. That net has a huge, huge factor when it comes down to the overall field position throughout the course of the game. Early on, because we allowed an explosive play on the first kickoff, the field position was backed up. And eventually, we were able to flip that and get ourselves in better situations there. And a lot of that has to do with how the whole team plays together and flipping that field from defense to then putting the special teams out there. And what we’re able to do with that to create

for your offense, like in the first half or average starting field position was like the 16 or 17. How hard is it to to offensively when you’re having to go 85-90 yards every drive?

It starts off with all three phases playing together. With that first kickoff the defense starting at the middle of the field, we went three and out there, but obviously they’re in a pinned situation now. The efficiency of the offense was there, I mean, we had the opportunity to move the sticks, but we dropped the ball on that first third down there, that would have moved the sticks. And then even within that, when you got a guy that is efficient the way he is, as a punter, even if you don’t continue to move the ball down the field, you’ve now are in a position to actually flip the field. So it’s all those small things within the game that when we talk about collectively builds a level of consistency. Those are the things that we’re talking about that then have ramifications on the big picture.

We saw George leave for a little bit, but when he came back, I mean, he was playing most of the game. What did you think of his performance? Yeah,

I mean, it was awesome to see him battle through the way he did and come back into the game. I was excited to see him back out there. The things that the you know, go unnoticed is probably the way he protects. I mean, he did he did a good job within protection. Obviously running the ball, he did a good job getting up in between and running between the tackles. And as always, you know, George is going to be a physical runner.

I don’t know if anyone asked you about it since over the last couple of months but I saw you ran out on the field for the first time a warm out and you had the visor with aw on and a lot of guys around the program have talked about what Andrew meant to this place and obviously with his passing what what did he mean to Boise State and and what have these lands? Yeah,

He was a rock in the program in terms of who he is was a person. As a young man, Andrew was extraordinary in a lot of ways. Not only was a very intelligent person that had unbelievable personality but for a guy his age extremely diligent a guy that the learns extremely fast and but the overall thing was how Andrew made you feel when he when you’re around him, like he’s just one of those people. Yeah, he had unbelievable impact in his time in this program.

Building off that I did notice quite a few guys were in visors to what was it about him in the visor that obviously he’s

Like we said all along, he’s gonna live on through us and our experience. The opportunity that we got the time we got to spend around him. There’s certain things that you know, we continue to do around here that no one sits in the seat in the team room here. Obviously, the visors are a tribute to him and as a reminder to who he was and the impact he had on this program.

We saw Ethan Card come out a couple of times at some packages third down stuff is that just kind of like him using him as an extra tight end or an extra blocker?

It’s an opportunity to again to use our personnel to our advantage with getting a guy that is capable. I can’t wait to see him go down the field here with his number 19 jersey on, waiting for Bush to unleash that. It just shows you that if guys work and they compete then we’ll find a role for them, and Ethan’s been awesome here. It’s what the O Line is building too. There’s there’s other guys that are within that too. That framework of guys that we want to get on the field, that are developing behind the scenes right now, they are doing really good things. And as we always talk about building that dependable depth, it’s got to be at all positions right now.

Our blower earlier, I mean, obviously, you’re gonna want to do that, no matter where in the season you are, but how much do you guys take pride in the 21 year home winning, or opening home win streak at all or,

There’s a lot of things that we take pride in. Bbeing a part of this program, there’s high standards. The things that we work towards, and that we build in, from January, all the way until now, that have to create a foundation. What we do and how we operate and the mentality that comes with it. So any opportunity we get to play on The Blue, we take great pride in that. And, as always, it’s always that one and zero, mentality, it’s this is the only game that matters right now, our preparation, and our focus is all on this.

I’m asking you to give away the game plan, but how would you say was the state’s offense football from week one to week two?

We are early into that that process as we go into second week. You know, the thing that I would say is that watching the film from last week, and as we’re early in the stages of building this plan, there’s definitely things that we can build off of that we did well. There’s things that we did well in the pass game, there’s things we can clean up, the variety of things that we have in the run game, and being able to get to some of those things, is going to be a critical component of this game. The overall efficiency is where we want to see, that’s really what we’re focused on. It’s not like things are going to drastically change. But from week one to week two, where we make the biggest jump is within that efficiency.