Rice Owls College Football Pregame Quote, 10/19/2021

I don’t think anybody associated with our program is happy about our performance versus UTSA. Unfortunately, that game didn’t go the way that we planned. We started slow in the first few drives (and) dug ourselves into a deep hole and we struggled to do much after that time. I’ve told our team that we have to do our jobs better and that starts with me. Everybody doing their 1/11. We have to stick together and we have to keep moving forward. Our coaches are going to coach them on anything that is correctable on the film. I’ve asked the players to remember the lessons, but not relive the game. I don’t want them ever to feel that way again. I want to do everything in my power, everything in our program to make sure we never feel that way again. We certainly don’t want to relive it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say what a great job Jeff Traylor, his staff and those players at UTSA have done. They’ve done a phenomenal job. They are a tough, tough team. I have a lot of respect for what they’ve done.

My team and this staff are completely committed to doing everything we can this week to put us in the best position to win this weekend. It really is a 1-0 singleness and purpose. We’re going back on the road to UAB to face the defending conference champs at their place. They’re led by Bill Clark, who I’ve known for 20-plus years. I’ve got a lot of respect for him as a football coach and a ton of respect for what he’s done building that program back into what it is today.

They do an unbelievable job in all three phases. Offensively, they run the wide zone play incredibly well. They throw shots and they hit those shots. Defensively, they’re a normal UAB defense. They are solid. They are clones. Their nose guards are going to be six-foot tall and they’re going to be 340-plus pounds. Their outside backers are going to be 6-7, 260. You watch them in warmups and they all look the same. You’ve got (defensive backs) back there who are going to play the game the way it’s supposed to be played in the run game. They are all physical and their linebackers do a great job coming downhill.

It’s an outstanding challenge for us going up there to Birmingham to play this game. We were excited to get back on the field yesterday and we’ll be excited to get this plan today and get back on the grass to practice together.

On if he has made any tweaks to his process:

In terms of true tweaks to the process, no. We know the process works. The process is prove, tried and true. But, there’s a couple of things we tweaked. It’s to the point of doing the same thing and expecting different results, but it is frustrating for everybody in this program because we practiced really well last week. But, we didn’t play like we wanted to. So, we’re going to continue to practice the right way, we’re going to continue to install the schemes the right way and prepare these guys the right way and we’re going to do everything in our power to tweak our ability to do it on game day the way that we practiced. I know that’s a universal problem. That’s why they call us Coach. We’re always trying to get the guys to be perfect. But we were far from perfect on Saturday. We have a lot of things that we can improve on. We’re going to try to get that done this week.

On what he’s seen from the players who have had to step up due to injury:

I think in college football, it has to be that mindset. It has to be next man up. But, in some cases, we’ve got the next, next man up and that is harder. I’ve tried to look at it in totality, especially on the defensive side of the ball. We returned 10 starters and we were excited about those guys. We knew they were going to be awesome. Then we knew that we were going to be able to insert (Desmyn Baker). Des for Blaze (Alldredge), that’s two guys who run all over the field and chase the ball down. We were excited about those possibilities. We returned the coaching staff. We returned Coach (Brian) Smith calling it and coaching it. So you try to ask yourself, what’s really different. One thing that’s really different is you look at UTSA, they’re an older team. They have great players and they had everybody starting that they planned on starting Day One of the football season. That’s nice. Some people get that reality. We have not been fortunate enough to get that reality here. Of the 10 starters that we thought were returning, five of them didn’t play against UTSA. That’s tough. It’s not excuses, it’s just reality. We want to make sure that, as you talk about what the backups, backups have done, it’s not to the same level as the starters. That’s a tough thing. It’s a tough thing as a coach when you have a scheme designed and it comes to fruition, everything goes the way you draw it up on paper, and then somebody doesn’t execute. But, again, that still all falls on us as a coaching staff. Our job is to get them to execute and be confident enough to make those plays in the game. That’s what we’re working to do.