Louisville Cardinals College Football Pregame Quote, 09/30/2019

All right, good. Good afternoon. hope everybody’s doing well. I know we’re excited to get back to a game week. We had a good week last week, really three days Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday and had a lot of fundamental work done and we gave the guys off Friday and Saturday which I think it’s always good particularly after the work a couple two months straight now just to give them a two days to clear their head mentally and come back ready to go and Sunday we practice yesterday had a good practice and it’ll be a good week for us this week. So, looking ahead, Boston College this week, they, you sit back and for us, we get to watch some football as well and as you know, obviously want to games you look at but we know they’re going to be a very physical football team coached well kids play very hard and we’re maybe the top rushing team in the conference coming in and so we kind of know what we’re going to get from them. The quarterbacks been playing good as well. So they put a lot of pressure on defenses. You know, you try to slow it up to stop the run next thing you know they’re throwing the ball over the top. The quarterbacks been very efficient. I think he threw his first pick for the season is back to actually, but they moved the ball well. They had 533 yards against Wake (Forrest) so, we know it’s a really good offense we’re going to be facing and then defensively they all they played their best game against Wake Forest this past week. Wakes offense has been one of the hottest offenses in the country. I thought he did a good job of containing them. They made it really hard on Wake. I think the difference in the game was Wake on third down. Wake was I think 17 for 23 on third down, which is unheard of, but their quarterback at Wake playing really at a high level. So, but it was a good football game, either team had a chance to win so we know we’re going to get it obviously a really tough contest for us this weekend. The key will be stopping the run. We there’s no question about it. So, trying to slow down those two backs, (AJ) Dylan’s 250 pounds in the back of 240 pounds. So like tackling linebackers coming through there. So but yeah, we’re excited about this week and look forward to get going.

On the quarterback health situation:

Well, we’re pretty healthy. The two quarterbacks you know, was obviously probably what you’re asking about, I think, but both guys were out yesterday. Puma (Pass) was kind of been out there practice throwing, not really running around and it’s kind of the same right now. He’s getting better every day but it’s a very slow healing process with him. Malik (Cunningham) looks a lot better and Malik was out, in cleats running around Sunday. Not full speed yet, but I would anticipate him being ready to go Tuesday’s practice tomorrow. He’s, so he’s getting better and better and better so, I would say really kind of kind of like we were going into your last game the Florida State game was very similar although home was a lot further along and so we’ll be ready again remains to be seen, but he’s getting closer

On the quarterback situation:

Well we try to do whatever they can do we want them to do, that’s kind of what we’re talking about with Puma. Puma has been out there and he’s thrown into some routes to the receiver and stuff. So we want him to get out there and then, Sunday’s practice and Malik is out there doing the same thing and whatever they can do will allow them to do. Malik did a little bit more Sunday now anticipate him being able to go for practice, like this week tomorrow. So whatever they they’re able to do physically, we want them to get there and do it. I think for a couple reasons, I think obviously, it keeps them kind of in the swing of things, but it also helps them mentally to know that, hey, I’m getting closer. And I think that’s probably the key, but Evan Conley has been getting a ton of reps, you know, which has been, good for him and if he has to go out and play, I feel very confident for him to be able to go out and make plays and move our offense. So, you know, we’ll see, you know, we talked about it, whoever is healthy and gives us the best chance to move the offense that’s who we will play.

What is the goal to stopping Boston College’s run game?

Well, that’s a huge deal. You know, maybe bring up a good point. I think, first downs going to be critical this week, because if they’re able to stay, second and medium now, their whole playbooks in you know, and now you know, obviously third down and shorted they don’t have one problem, trying to get a first down with that scenario. You know, the problem with the big backs as you look up, you think you stopped him and next thing in a second and five, you know, he just fell forward for five yards. So it is very imperative this week that we gang tackle you know it’s extremely difficult as you watch the film from him as one guy trying to bring him down you know you have to you know you have to go low. You go high he’s going to drag you. So, we have to gang tackle both of these backs and they keep the pressure on. It’s a difficult game to stop.

On not having enough quarterbacks:

Oh man it’s exactly right that’s why you have to have five you know if you go look and we’ve talked about this, if you to all the contender football teams have good quarterbacks, I mean, NFL College High School, if you got a good trigger, man and they can move the ball to you know, eventually get points. You got an opportunity to win games. You got to score points and you get great quarterback play then it gives you a great opportunity. I don’t care how good your defense is. So you better have more quarterbacks there because going to get dinged up you look at Florida State great example you know the one player gets knocked out by us and then the other kids that comes in and plays lights out and then he started this past week and three more touchdown passes and had a great game 300 some yards so you better have those next guys that can play quarterback and that’s why we would like to have our numbers five and we can have five guys and in that room so that one goes down the next one’s ready to go.

You’ve talked about stopping Boston College’s running game. Have you been pleased with your rush defense so far?

I think it’s been pretty solid. We obviously think we can get better with it. We’re getting ready to face a team that’ll certainly test that. I think they have a pretty solid offensive line; they’re young, but they’re talented, and those two big backs, and they have really good tight ends. We’re going to have to fit this offensive really well this week. This’ll be a big test. We’ll see where we stack up this week. I think we’ve done a pretty good job thus far. [Cam] Akers at Florida State is a really talented running back, although a little bit different style than we’ll see this week. He had some pretty big runs against us. But it wasn’t like they rushed for over 300 yards. This week, this team can go over 300 yards if you’re not fitting right and not tackling. We’ve seen them do it, and they’d love to be able to do it. If they don’t have to throw it – that would be good for them. So we have to be able to sell out and stop the run.

You’ve mentioned Cam [Akers] and AJ [Dillon], I’m not comparing them elite-wise, but game-style-wise. AJ’s had 150 the last three games. What’s different about those two?

It’s a little bit different with Florida State in what they did with Cam, they kind of spread you out, and now Akers has space, so now it’s one-on-one. If I make that guy miss, I can have a run and have a big play. Where these guys will more be utilizing tight ends, more compact sets, full backs, tight ends, so now there’s more guys in here. So he’s getting those yards where guys are just hitting him. Those can be demoralizing. Once you have everyone in the box, you can’t go grab more guys and put them in the box – you just can’t. You can either stop them or you don’t. I think the key this week with Dillon and the other back is that you have to stop that momentum initially. Once they cross the line of scrimmage, they’re able to fall 4, 5, 6 yards. If you can make them stop their feet in the back field, they don’t have the kind of acceleration right of the bat. But once they get going, they’re hard to bring down. Where Akers, he can be fast right now. I think that’s probably the main difference there – they’re both very talented, when you compare Akers to Dillon. They’re extremely talented the way they approach it and great respect for both. Just a little bit different style. We want to try to get him stopped in the backfield as close to the line of scrimmage as possible, as opposed to getting him into that second level of linebackers.

Is the defensive line the key to stopping a running game like that?

Yeah, I think so. What we’re doing is that we have to create freedom for our backers to be able to come up into the line of scrimmage to make those contacts right at the line of scrimmage to where those lineman can’t get on the backers. We have to create confusion up front and create some angles for our guys. That’ll be big this week for our d-line; huge deal to get up there to create that penetration, which I thought Wake did that at times, putting penetration on there. But still it wasn’t enough.

Are you happy with your running game and the way the line has progressed up front for you guys?

I think so. I think we’ve done a solid job this year. Right out the gate against Notre Dame – to be able to run 250 against that defense I thought was very solid. Probably the most disappointing part was the pass game we had – we didn’t run it as well as we would’ve liked. All three of their guys, 300 pounds up front, I thought they were a good d-line we played against. We have to do a better job with running the football than we did at Florida State. We want to be over 200 yards – that’s the benchmark we like to get rushing the football – and we were not able to get there. So we’ll keep working at it and continue to try to find ways to run the ball. Offensive formations would help us a lot as well.

A little off topic, California governor today signed the bill fair pay-to-play. How do you see this unfolding? Do you think it’s a competitive disadvantage for schools outside of CA and would you favor adoption in Kentucky?

I don’t know enough about it to know. I think if the governor passed it, what’s the NCAA going to do? I think that’s the next step. Marijuana’s illegal in several states, but it is still illegal to do that as far as NCAA goes. Is it going to be illegal or legal NCAA-wise? I think that’s going to be the biggest question.

As of right now, do you expect Malik or Puma to play on Saturday?

I do. Just because they are getting better. Malik practiced on Sunday and it was in cleats, running around so I feel pretty good about him. If he will make the same progress he made last week, this week I think he 100% will play. Puma is the biggest question in my mind.

One thing the team has struggled with is getting interceptions. Why do you think that is?

We got to get better in the secondary. I think that’s the bottom line. If you compare some of the guys we had at App. (Appalachian State) to the guys we have here. Those guys at App. had great ball skills in the secondary and had great anticipation. They would step in front of the receivers and just catch the football. I think that’s the bottom line. We’re running the same scheme and there are times you go back in the Florida State game. What’s their favorite play that they like to run? We call it Banggae, just a skinny post. At times, you just have to recognize that and jump in front of that and pick that ball off. That’s just an example that I’ve seen over the years that we’ve been able to do. Those are the two things, you have to have the ball skills to be able to catch the football and you have to have great anticipation and great football awareness of what’s going on. That’s: down and distance, formations, their tendencies. All of those things that we’re coaching really hard right now to try and get. We just haven’t clicked yet and we will continue to coach it and hopefully we will be able to get some of those. It’s disappointing right now, we haven’t created many turnovers in 4 weeks. Zero interceptions, and we’ve had defenses in the past that are really good at that. That were really good at getting those interceptions. We’re going to keep coaching it and hopefully we start to get some.

Talking about getting better in some areas and can he judge which are getting better than others:

No, I think it’s a work in progress. Getting better may just be small and hopefully over a period of time, we will continue to get better, and better, and better. Continue to grow as a football team. The positive thing is, with 7 minutes to go we’re winning a football game in Tallahassee. We didn’t finish it, way too many mistakes. The big thing for us is just the mental errors we were having, all year really. We’re 2-2 we’ve had a lot of mental errors. If we can clean those up then we will win some football games. I think that’s what it is going to come down to. We’re not good enough to go out there and just play and have mental mistakes, we’re not going to win many games that way. We have to be very sharp mentally and play a clean game. Then we can win some games. When we do that we are a good football team and when we don’t we are a bad football team. Our job as coaches and players is to button up all of that and continue to try to make less mental errors. That’s a work in progress right now, that’s where we’re at. As we continue to play, we’ll see how we are and how much better we will be with it.

Have you ever been in a situation in your coaching career with quarterbacks not being available, and if not, what has been the difficulty of going through that?

We’ve definitely been in that situation. It’s why you want to have a lot of quarterbacks, because of that. I’ve gone into bowl games, it’s funny we have Zeb Speir who is our graduate assistant, he still has one year of eligibility left. So I’ve thought about maybe trying to dress him out. You go to Florida State last week, and we only had two quarterbacks warming up and that’s it. I was kind of thinking Florida State coach is probably thinking, that’s all they got is two. That’s really all we had, and it’s frustrating to not have many arms. What’s hard is in practice throwing routes to receivers. You start wearing these guys out. Evan Conley, the last week and a half, he’s been in there and wearing these guys out, but he loves it though. But you like to have it. I went to a bowl game, I think it was two years ago. All we had was one quarterback, that’s when Zeb was number 2 that day and we didn’t have to play him. There have also been years where Taylor Lamb started 4 years and never missed a game. You just have to have those guys, you hope they stay healthy but you know that things happen. I think that’s why you have to have more guys, and you want them at every position. I think the quarterback what everybody sees. You guys see it, the fans see it, everybody sees that one position. They have their hand touch the football every snap. So, you better have a guy there that can make things happen.

You talked a lot about improving the passing game for the offense and accuracy. In general how do you improve that?

Accuracy is something that you have, or don’t once you get to college. It is hard to tweak any mechanical issues because the habits you have created are really who you are at this point. I think what you try to do as caches to help these guys out is try and find ways these guys have easy completions. You know we have done that this year with the jet sweep and the little slips to the tight ends. Those are easy completions and it helps give your quarterback a little more confidence when they do throw the ball down the field. So, these are things that we can do as coaches’ scheme wise to help these guys out and we work on it every day. We will just continue to work on it, and you may see some small improvements but nothing major right away. The positive thing is we are taking care of the football. Our touchdown to interception ratio is good. We have done some good things in it, getting the ball to Fitz (Dez Fitzpatrick). I would like to get the ball a little more to Ford (Justin Ford). When the ball is in his hands when you go back and look at this season, he has made big plays. He is a good big target for us. We haven’t thrown the ball to the backs; I think we need to start doing that more. These are all things that help your completion percentage and keeps pressure on the defense. When we do take shots down the field, we got to hit them. We hit Fitz on the one, we had TuTu (Chatarius Atwell) down the sideline, Ford down the sideline, more of these types of throws we must hit but we will just continue to work on it. When you get to college you have to recruit guys who can throw. When I go and look at Aaron Rodgers, when he was in high school, his junior college at Cal and the NFL, he’s never throwing a pick. He’s just accurate. He doesn’t throw the ball into those coverages and a lot of that stuff is what you recruit. You’re going to get what you get.

Did the North Carolina Clemson game change your opinion about either A the conference of B Clemson’s supposed instability?

Clemson’s human I think after that game. I watched a little bit of that one and North Carolina did a great job defensively to get after them. Clemson still has ton of talent. They lost a lot of players to the NFL, but you still look at them and maybe their missing some experience. North Carolina did a good job against them. They scored early. I think you must do that when your playing against a team like that you look and that’s what we did with Notre Dame. That gives you some confidence saying we can play with these guys. They got after Trevor Lawrence a little bit and frustrated him. It just proves we are dealing with 18-22-year old’s week in and week out. Some media and fans try go and put teams up on a pedestal like your Alabama’s, Clemson’s, Ohio St’s, and those type but on a given Saturday if things don’t go right, they can get beat. It doesn’t matter who it is. I think it just proves that. If North Carolina comes down and scores those two points they pry win the game and it would be an incredible upset. But, they didn’t. Clemson won again and I don’t know how many that is in a row but that’s a lot. They have done a great job down there, but it just proves if things don’t go right, anyone can win the game.

You have mentioned a lot about decision making when you talk about the quarterbacks, how crucial is accuracy as well for them?

Accuracy to me is one of the most important with decision making. If you have that then you can be a solid quarterback in our offense. We’re going to run the football, were going to have guys open. If I’m accurate then I can put them on and complete footballs, but decision making might be a little more important because if you can decide that quick, in the running game and in the passing game then you can make plays. You really don’t have to have a strong arm. Look at Joe Montana, he didn’t have a strong arm, he just knew when to throw it every time. The ball came out of his hands before the guy broke and the ball was there waiting on him and he was accurate. The decision making is huge, but you got to have that. That can be taught but that is more natural. If you’re a quick processor it can be. A lot of times, I think quick processing goes unnoticed. This is defensive players, this is quarterbacks, all need to be quick processors and if you can have that then your going to be a lot better football player. You can be a step slower on defense if you’re a quick processor. Those things sometimes go overlooked but they are what we look for in recruiting.

You mentioned the guys had the weekend off, on a weekend off do you like to relax and watch football or just chill and relax?

Thursday nights I try and watch the games, Friday nights I try and watch the games and on Saturdays too if we play at 1230 like this weekend I’ll go and watch the games Saturday night. I just enjoy it, I’m just a football junkie and I’m fortunate enough to coach it, This 0past weekend my son tore his ACL and he had surgery Thursday so I went back home with him in North Carolina so we sat around and watched ball on Saturday as much as me could on the phone, tv anything we could. For me I’m always watching the game, trying to find ways to help our team. So, as I’m watching I’m thinking of different scenarios and if this could help our team down the road. It’s an enjoyment but also what can we do to help our team win. I mean I write stuff down and I take stuff back here.