Old Dominion Monarchs College Football Pregame Quote, 10/11/2021

Obviously a tough loss, I thought our players played extremely hard. Like I’ve said before, it’s something I expect them to do and continue to do throughout the season. We need to find a way, the coaches to the players to the athletic trainers, anybody involved in the program we’ve got to find a way to close that one out. Looking forward to getting back on the practice field tomorrow and preparing for a very good Western Kentucky team whose also hungry for a win. Should be a good matchup.

What do you tell your guys after another disappointment about their “phsychie” when it comes to moments like this in the season?

After the game in the locker room, I told them this is when you invest more. Work and make sure that every single play in practice you’re giving it everything you have until you walk off the practice field exhausted. Ran out of gas a little bit at the end there, I actually think it was more of a mental thing. We’ve got to make sure that we’re mentally locked in through practice and focused in practice through every single play so we can start to build up that sort of mentality throughout the game. We’ve responded well. We’ve got a great group of young men who have responded well to this.

Ricky you’ve talked a lot about the little things, you’re a few little things away from 4-2. Is that something you talk to your players about or is that something you think they already know?

We don’t talk about our record, but we do talk about the details and where we can improve. Where each play matters whether its in the first quarter or it’s in the fourth quarter or in overtime. You never can tell. There’s plays that we didn’t make in the first quarter that could’ve really affected the outcome of that game, on the flipside of that there’s plays we make in the first quarter that allowed us to be in that game the way we were. We talk about the details all the time; I know its clich√© and trivial, but I don’t really believe in small things. Small things become big things. One thing I said after the game, eventually ‚Äúthe football gods‚Äù make you pay for those things. You can only do something incorrectly so many times before you have to pay the piper. Kind of make sure that we’re doing things correctly all the time. Everybody in the entire program. That’s always going to be a major focus, but it continues this week for sure.

Coach it seems like every week we ask you about confidence. Which way is it right now? Are your guys still confident that you guys are close or are all these close losses starting to wear on them? At least by what you’re seeing.

No. Are they upset that we didn’t win a game that we could have and probably should have? Of course. They’re competitors and they’re going to be that way. I wouldn’t say that their confidence is any lower. They realize the mistakes we made that put them in that position, we realize the big plays they made that put us in that position. The thing that I’ve seen is I think their confidence is growing from the fact when they do things correctly the type of team that we can be.

Ricky what’d you find out about Smartt and Spencer?

Still evaluating. Its going to be one of those things, those are big parts of our team and very explosive players. Stone obviously gives us a lot of different dimensions, so does Isaiah when you’re able to hand the ball off to a tight end. That obviously gives you some versatility. Waiting to see what those guys are going to be able to do. We’ve got a great training staff so I’m excited to watch those guys try to get back as soon as possible.

Going back to coaching them and not berating them, DJ in the fourth quarter throws the interception in the end zone. How do you approach that from a standpoint of ‚Äúhey look we can’t make mistakes like that‚Äù while at the same time still showing that ‚ÄúYou’re our guy, we’re confident in you, we know you can make these plays‚Äù?

Obviously that was a big play in the game. Our defense did turn around stand up and force a punt from a coming out situation and gives us great field position. That was an awesome turn of events there. I thought our defense in those coming out situations all game did a nice job. It’s one of those things the player has to understand it’s not acceptable what they did and why it’s unacceptable and those sorts of things. But I don’t think there’s anybody going out there making the mistake on purpose or anything like that. Its one of those things where yeah, you’re going to get upset. It’s a little bit different when maybe it’s a mistake that’s made when a player talks back, or a player shows disrespect to the other team or to their own teammate or even to themselves. That’s going to be a little bit more stern.

Ricky, not about the record but when you think back to the pre-season which was two seasons really and what you thought you might have, you’re at the halfway point. How would you evaluate that overall?

I think overall we’re trending in the right direction, but we haven’t been consistent enough to produce what we want, and Monarch Nation deserves. That’s the thing that holds us back right now is just the overall consistency. We’ve had games where we started off well but haven’t finished well. We haven’t started well and then we finish very well. We had some games where we’ve played pretty good on third down, but we’ve struggled on second down. We’ve got to be much more consistent in order to show the progress that we’re actually making behind the scenes. You guys have heard it from me a million times Im a process-oriented person, but I’m also not an idiot. I’m judged on results and those sorts of thing which is fine. I know we’re still making progress anybody who watches the tape knows we’re making progress, but ultimately the results are the results. We’ve got to continue to be more consistent so we can get better results.

You talked the last week about how unfortunate it was that you guys had to take the 2000-mile trip to UTEP and then turn around and go to Marshall. With that being said, how good does it feel to be home for a game?

It’s going to be great. I thought our players and coaches responded well last week to the challenge. It was a good environment to play in. Obviously those fands created a good environment, there were some moments where it got pretty loud. It was good to be there and play in that environment but its going to be a whole lot better to play in front of our home fans and have people behind us.

What do you know about Western Kentucky from watching film the last day or so?

Great offense. Really powered by the quarterback. I mean that quarterback is a very good player. I gave him what I consider the highest praise for quarterbacks, he’s a great passer. He’s extremely accurate, he knows how to change trajectories on the ball, he knows when to get the ball out quickly and he knows when to hold it a little bit longer. He’s more athletic than I want him to be, he extends plays and does some really good things on that end of it as well. He doesn’t put himself or the ball in jeopardy. Really impressive. I think he’s a quarterback’s quarterback. He plays the game that you want to play at that position, he does an excellent job. They’ve run the ball well considering the amount of times they run it, they’re physical. They run the ball well when they run it. On defense they’re playing a lot of plays, so some of these stats are skewed a little bit because their offense is scoring well and scoring quickly, and they go very fast on offense. They play a lot of plays so some of those stats are skewed a little bit. They give you a variety of coverages, a variety of fronts up front, they have a defensive end that’s a very good athlete and can really get after the passer. He was a defensive preseason player of the year candidate. They’ve got good players on defense, and we’ve got to be prepared on all sides of the ball.

They scored 46 points in a loss. Not saying you have night sweats, but do you feel a little trickle every now and then?

No one believes in our defensive coaching staff and our defensive players more than me. We just went against the No. 1 offense in the league, and I think we played pretty darn well. We’ve got to go out there, we’re not going to get any bonus points for that in this one. We’ve got to go out there and play well again, but our guys are going to be ready to go. I don’t have any doubts or fears about that.

Todd Monken once said, this was years ago, once said that “days of telling players because I said so are over.” Do you agree with that?

Yeah, you have to show them why and how this benefits them in some way shape or form. I’ve said this before, it’s not the players. I wanted to know why too. I would like to know why I’m doing this. Why are we reading it that way? Why are we doing that, why do we have to go to study hall. They’re able to see if you can frame it in a way that helps them. As soon as you’re in the real world you’re not allowed to show up late for work. You’re going to get fired. I’m trying to help you be successful in your life. The reason we’re reading it this way this week is because the way they play their cover 2 looks like 3 cloud or 3 roll boundary, so we’ve got to read it a little bit different this week. I think that what’s happened is there’s just more information out there and more people out there and those sorts of things. People always wanted to know why they were doing something. The whole salute and run up the hill mentality didn’t exactly work at Pickett’s charge, I don’t think it works now. You probably might want to know why you’re doing something. But then in the heat of the moment yeah there are some things that I’m going to tell you to do something, and you need to do it. You might question me when we get off the field, ‚ÄúHey coach why are we doing it that way‚Äù and then I’m going to answer them. A coach that doesn’t answer you it’s because he doesn’t know. I don’t want to ever have our guys doing something that I don’t know why its beneficial to them to becoming a better person or a better football player.

Coach are you anticipating a different type of energy from your team not only because you guys are trying to end this losing streak but because its homecoming week and the players might have a little more, they want to show to the ODU fans and student body?

I know that’s obviously a factor. I want our guys to have intrinsic motivation because that lasts longer. We just talked about that. We read a poem yesterday that I love ‚ÄúIf‚Äù by Rudyard Kipling. Its one of my favorites. We kind of went through it line by line and went over all the different things, and that’s one of them. No man counts too much. I think that we’ve got to make sure that we are intrinsically motivated. We can’t control those factors outside. We don’t know how many fans are going to show up at the game. I hope its loaded. I hope its 23,000 people are screaming and whatever. We’re still going to be expected to go out there and perform if it’s not. I want to make sure that our guys have that motivation coming from inside. There’s a lot of our guys that you ask, ‚ÄúHey why do you do this?‚Äù ‚ÄúI do this because I want to do this for my family‚Äù which is awesome, and family is important. No one loves their family more than me, anybody who’s been around me for even a second knows that. But you’ve got to want this for yourself too. It can’t just be all about what your family, for your friends, for your city and all those sorts of things. It’s got to be in here as well. I think our guys are starting to witness that. That’s not a selfish thing, that’s wanting to do it, so you are successful for you, your teammates, and everybody else. That’s got to be in here, you can’t always wait for the crowd and things like that.

People watching your overtime possession might wonder how much confidence you have in DJ. How much confidence do you have in him?

We knew we had four downs, so that’s why we ended up going with three different runs. Obviously, we put the ball in his hands on one of them to run it. It was one of those things where you go back and look at our most explosive plays in the game were some third down runs. They were playing coverage and we were able to put him through. I can’t remember exactly how long Blake’s run, but it was more than 40yards and that was on a third down run as well. Its one of those things that’s what we thought that would give us our best chance to win that game. Obviously when it doesn’t work, we’re all going to get second guessed. If we split it, it’s a great play call and if it doesn’t work then its why didn’t we throw it on third down. We’ve got to evaluate what gave us the best chance to get that in there. That is something that we’re constantly evaluating.