Houston Cougars College Football Pregame Quote, 09/09/2019

On the short week before facing Washington State:

I think it’s fine, we did it twice in camp. We went on a six-day window with an off day, then did a six-day week with an off day. We did it for Oklahoma, did it for Prairie View, and we’ll do it again. It’s just routine at this point. Just looking at it, those guys understand that routine is important. It’s one of the reasons why I agreed to put Oklahoma on a Sunday night, so that we could get into a routine more than anything. I think it’s fine. Yesterday was an off day, today we’ll have the same day that we had last week. Today is Tuesday in our world, then Friday would be a Saturday in our world. It’s just routine I thought we han-dled it fine. There’s a lot of things that we didn’t do right in the game last week. From being prepared to play and understanding routine it was just fine.

On playing under Mike Leach at Iowa Wesleyan during the birth of Mumme and Leach’s “Air Raid” offense:

It’s unexplainable. He’s a unique guy. I remember seeing that funny looking guy with sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and hair everywhere that was the genius Mike Leach back in the day. He’s done such a good job at Washington State. He’s been there eight years. It seems like just yesterday he was at Texas Tech. I left there in ‚Äò08 when he was going on his ninth year in that program. The offense looks the same, but with a better defense. It’s eerie how similar what they’re doing offensively is [to Iowa Wesleyan]. They’re good at it. It reminds me of when we were at [Texas] Tech and we would lose a quarterback and we’d plug another guy in who was a senior and nothing would change. It’s really interesting to watch. I’ve changed a lot, he hasn’t. He’s going to throw for a gazillion yards and is going to have his receivers in the right spots. His O-Line is going be nasty up front. The thing that’s different with his program is that de-fense, It’s really good. They were really good two years ago. They lost their coordinator but you look at the video and it looks the same. He’s really done an outstanding job up there.

On his part of the creation of the “Air Raid” offense:

It would take too long to describe this. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the beginnings of it. Him and Hal [Mumme] are the ones that got all this stuff together, I was in high school when those guys got together and started developing this stuff. They would take trips to BYU and they would go see Lindy In-fante up in Green Bay and Bill Walsh out in California and developed a deal. Mike Leach has been doing the same stuff forever. If there is one thing that is admirable about him it’s that as much as people have evolved he has pretty much continued to do that same stuff. There has never been a play book, but there has been books written about how it’s developed and those were the guys that were the beginning stages of what it was.

On Leroy Godfrey and Isiah Chambers returning to play:

You know you try to figure out our depth chart and you can continue how to figure out our depth chart. We play people who deserve to play. That is the bottom line. We are the ones who evaluate people and based on how they do in practice is how we are going to play them in a game. I don’t care what they did last year, I don’t care what they did two years ago, I don’t care if they were hurt or weren’t hurt. If you perform well in practice we are going to play you in a game. That depth chart will continue to change and guys will get reps based on how they practice. You can keep trying to figure out the depth chart and who deserves the snaps all you want to, its going to vary week to week.

On facing Washington State Head Coach Mike Leach:

I think it’s a good storyline, it’s good for y’all and good for the entertainment aspect. I think all of that is very positive for college football and positive for the University of Houston and Washington State as well but it was the same thing two weeks ago. Everybody trades ideas, everybody makes phone calls and tries to figure out the other opponent and everyone watches all the video to figure it out. It gets right down to putting your players in the best position you can possibly put them in and then trying to get them to play really well. This is another step in the 2019 ‚ÄòAir Raid’ reunion, we will do it again in a couple weeks with Seth Littrell, Sonny Dykes and all those guys. I sat and watched video with our defense for an hour this morning, whether it helps or not I don’t know. You put things on video, and you prepare and practice and then you go play and you try to put them in position to be successful and hopefully you can be.

On his third “Air Raid” reunion:

It is a great story. Like I said, there are books written about it and all that. It’s a great story and we have ‚Äòbeen there done that’ so many times. I mean I sat here t10 years ago and was at a press conference when Texas Tech was coming to the University of Houston and we dealt with the same thing 10 years ago. Mike’s coaching tree is so big now and it’s an extension of Hal’s coaching tree obviously, but Mike’s coach-ing tree is so big now that we play against those guys all the time. This is just the way it is and we are for-tunate to be a part of it. I guess maybe 10 years from now when I retire I will look back on it and say ‚Äòoh yeah that stuff was pretty cool’ and we will sit around and be able to talk about it around dinner, but now we are just trying to beat them.

On D’Eriq King taking runs:

We want him to play ball. There’s going to be times that we put him in positions to do specific things, there’s a lot that he can do. You’ve heard me say from day one that we’re going to try to keep him clean, that all depends on what kind of a game it is and how the game is going and what we feel we need to do to be successful. There’s a lot of things that we need to work on as an offense, and there’s a lot of things he needs to work on so we’re going to get out there tonight and work hard on them.

On possible improvements from the offense and D’Eriq King:

We need to work on everything, our timing isn’t good. Just understanding what we want to do. We need to get guys in the right spots so he can sit in there. Everyone points the fingers at the quarterback if things don’t look good, but there’s 10 other people out there that need to do the same thing. There’s a couple of calls that I wish I’ve had back. There were some sacks that shouldn’t have happened based on line play. There were some sacks that shouldn’t of happened based on receivers not being where they were sup-posed to. There were some sacks that shouldn’t have happened based on the quarterback not putting his eyes where we needed him to. The list goes on and on, we’re two games into this offense so it’s not going to look good initially. My goal is to try to make it look a little bit better this week and a little bit better a week after that. He’s a big part of that, and he’s got a skill set that’s pretty good. We’re going to do our best as coaches to put our offense in a position to be successful, but also put him in a position to be suc-cessful as well. What exactly that is, is for me to figure out and once you see it on game day you can write about it, but between now and then we’re not going to talk about it.

On facing Washington State this week:

We have a huge challenge Friday night. Washington State has won 13 out of 15 games, they won 11 last year and nine or more the last four years. They’re very good, we have a huge challenge. We’re playing on a big stage Friday night, and I think we’ll respond well. We came out and started fast last week, we jumped on that group. We shut that down and didn’t play very good for a whole half. The one thing that I know about Washington State and Mike Leach is that they’re going to play hard. Those guys are going to play hard, and they’re going to play hard for four quarters. I need to get our guys to understand that’s go-ing to have to be the standard for pretty much everybody that we play. That’s just the way that college football works. I think we’ll respond and I hope that we respond. It will be interesting to see Friday night.

On playing at NRG Stadium:

The players have always liked being able to play in an NFL stadium, I’d rather play at home. It’s always been cool to them, it’s a great venue. I’ve been to a bunch of different games there, and have played in bowl games there. I’m a big fan of neutral sight games, and this is pretty much a neutral sight game. I wish the return trip would be played in a neutral sight as well, but unfortunately it’s not. It will be good for our guys, obviously it’s here in the city so everybody can go watch. It’s on national TV on a big stage.