Marshall Thundering Herd College Football Pregame Quote, 10/19/2021

First want to start off by congratulating our very own Mark Martin and Steve Cotton on their much due induction into the West Virginia Broadcasting Sports Hall of Fame. These guys have put a lot into not only sports here in West Virginia but into Marshall University. So, I want to congratulate those guys. I appreciate everything they do, they’ve been phenomenal since I’ve been here, two of the hardest working men in the business in my opinion from the time that I’ve been here. So, congratulations to them and just like always anytime a member of the Marshall family gets recognized, I think that speaks for all of us. Phenomenal job by those guys, I hope they continue to achieve in their fields as well.

So, from the game Friday, it seems like two months ago that we played. But from the game Friday, obviously did some really good things. [I] thought for the first time, in a long time, we played together as a team in all three phases. We talked about how discipline had plagued us before. When I say discipline, I’m not just talking about I’m not just talking about hitting someone after the whistle or doing something ‘bad’ ‚Äì it’s everything. It’s not jumping offsides, playing gap control defense, it’s protecting the ball, it’s making really good choices and decisions at the quarterback position, it’s DBs attacking the ball in the air and not committing penalties.

We talked about that all week, not that ‚Äì that was just for that game, it has plagued us for unsuccessful games. You go back and you look at those games and it was discipline whether it was lack of gap control, whether it was lack of finish in the fourth quarter, whether it was poor red zone offense, whether it was turnovers, whatever it maybe ‚Äì it was discipline. I thought for the first time it hit home, we were able to control or manage our discipline. We weren’t perfect by any means still a lot to clean up. But from a penalty perspective, I think we had five penalties and they had 17. So that’s a huge difference and it created a lot of positive opportunities for us in the game. It allowed for us to control the field position battle.

For the third week in a row, I think we all are starting to see our defense play at consistent level. Are we perfect? No, not at all. There were still a couple opportunities in there where our gap control was not consistent. Those long runs spit out but if you look at the game as a whole, I think, especially when we had our first teamers in there, they were starting to play really consistent, starting to play really sound, starting to make teams actually have to drive down the field. Still a lot to clean up when we put some of our second stringers and younger guys in there in the second half. It got a little sloppier than we needed it to be but I think it was a great learning experiences for those guys to understand it’s one thing to say, ‘Hey, I want to play. Why aren’t I playing?’ It’s another thing to get in the game and actually have to execute.

I told the guys yesterday in the meeting that we’re going to need those guys as we go down the stretch. So, they have to improve. The older guys, we still have to improve. There’s still one or two times where in the run game where the ball is spitting out of there not because of great blocking but because of lack of gap control defense. I think we’re playing the ball in the air a little bit better at defensive back.

We talked about penalties that hurt us in a couple games and our guys are starting to play the ball in the air a little bit. I also think part of that is confidence in our defense. Confidence that we’re stopping the run, confidence that we get a little more of a gage when they have to throw and what routes they have to throw as a whole.

Offensively, we kind of got back to our confident ways. Coach Huff took his ‚ÄòPlease don’t fumble, please don’t throw an interception,’ glasses off and allowed our offense to flow and trusted our players. Put a lot on them to make the corrections from the issues we had in the past. It starts with our running game, I know, everyone gets excited when we get in tempo with our throwing the ball ‚Äì yes that’s what we do. But you have to be able to run the ball effectively in order to get the ball down the field and into the intermediate range.

Grant [Wells] played really sound in the first half. Someone told me he broke a consistent completion record. Which to me, he should always do that easily, it’s just routes on air, throwing to the open guy. I’ve never played quarterback but it seems easy that way. But I think we got to see when he’s comfortable, we play ahead of the sticks, it’s a lot easier for him to distribute the ball to the guys he’s supposed to.

When you look across the stats, we aren’t just targeting one guy, I think we’re letting the offense dictate where the ball goes, when the ball gets in those guys hands we’re putting the onus on them to make plays. I don’t think you have to throw the ball 80 yards down the field to get an 80-yard completion but I do think you have to have a good catch and yards after catch in order to do those things.

I’m really happy with how those guys played and a lot of stuff to clean up in the fourth quarter. We talk about finishing and I don’t think we finished in the way we want to. Obviously not a lack of effort but putting some new guys in and getting the opportunity. In order for us to keep making strides forward, we’re going to have to learn how to start fast, like we did, and finish because teams are not going to fold the tent. They are going to play, so we have to play for 60 minutes. [I’m] really pleased with the outcome, but definitely still have a lot of work to do, a lot of things we have to get cleaned up as we continue to move forward with this season.

On approaching November:

Well, everybody probably hates me because we stumbled early. I asked the guys yesterday in the meeting, ‘Does something bad have to happen again for us to start playing the way we know we should play or can we learn from the feeling we had when we went into the locker room after three games where we didn’t have the result we wanted.’ What I hope is that we can learn from results we didn’t like moving forward rather than having something bad have to happen before all of a sudden, ‘I have to get my mind right.’ Does your boss have to say, ‚ÄòIf you’re late to work again, I’m going to have to fire you,’ before you start showing up on time or do you say, ‘You know what, I’m supposed to be on time. I’m going to be on time.’

If we can learn from the way we felt in those three games that we didn’t get the results we wanted and if we can remember the feeling we had in the locker room versus ODU, versus North Texas, hopefully that will propel us to do the things we need to do throughout the week to get the results we want.

On the offensive line:

They’ve done a really good job of continuing to work. We came into camp, obviously some guys had more experience than others and we told the whole team, ‘I don’t know when your opportunity is going to come but it is your job to prepare.’

I think James McGee is a great example of a guy that has just prepared his tail off. He’s gotten better each week and his opportunity came. I thought he did a good job. Obviously, there’s some things that he would like to clean up and we’d like to see better. But I thought when his opportunity came he stepped up and relied on his preparation. But it goes back to his preparation all through spring, all through summer, all through camp not knowing when his opportunity was going to come. It’s a good example of when you put your head down and work to close the gap or you trust the process when your opportunity comes, you’re prepared.

We have to get more guys like him not only on the offensive line but on the whole team that have that mentality because you don’t know when a guy’s going to go down, you don’t know when your number is going to be called. When your number is called and it’s 49-14, or whatever, you maybe able to get away with some of those mistakes but if your number is called like James’ was, at 0-0, he didn’t know going into the game how it was going to play out. But he was able to rely on his preparation and we had confidence in him.

I think Coach Morris has done a phenomenal job of moving the pieces around on that offensive line so we have the next best guy. It may not be the guy that’s listed as the backup guard or the backup tackle, it’s the next best guy. Those guys have done a phenomenal job of banding together. [Alex] Mollette will tell those guys, ‘I don’t want you in here if you don’t know what you’re doing,’ and those younger guys take pride in knowing what they’re doing. So when they get in there, they can carry their weight.