Texas Longhorns College Football Pregame Quote, 10/21/2019

Excited to be back at work, had a really good practice yesterday. Obviously we know we have got to play better defensively and everybody associated with that side of the ball, coaches, players, leaders, we all get it and we’re committed to figuring it out and I think we can and will. Injury update, DeMarvion Overshown practiced yesterday, complained a little bit of some shoulder pain from the game, felt okay yesterday, this morning came in a little bit worse, so, we’re sending him in for all the normal tests.

Jalen Green did practice yesterday, so we will see how he handles some contact tomorrow in practice on that shoulder. So that was encouraging. BJ Foster, we’re working him up for anything and everything. He did not play very ‚Äì you could tell he was favoring his left shoulder pretty significantly in the game Saturday night and so we just want to make sure that we’re crossing all our T’s and dotting al our I’s on that deal.

So, questions.

Because it was Kansas and you were a huge favorite, is it wrong for fans to be concerned or upset by a close home win over Kansas?

No, no, they should be. We have standards at The University of Texas that we need to play up to and we didn’t on that side of the ball. And, again, when you’re starting nine freshmen or sophomores on defense and you turn the ball over twice in the fourth quarter where we turned it over, that’s not real good complimentary football too. So although the numbers say we played really well offensively, I would argue that situationally we didn’t help our defense. But none of us are okay or satisfied with that defensive performance just because we won the game. Are we happy to win the game? Absolutely. And at the end of the year this one’s going to count just the same as all the other ones do. They don’t count them any different, but we expect to play much, much betterb especially defensively.

Did you think there was a letdown emotionally after the Oklahoma rivalry game?

I didn’t think so, no. We jumped up 14-0. Got some stops. Played well offensively. No. I think they did their best emotionally. When you watch even on the defensive side, I mean, we were flying around, we were running to the ball. We were just doing it with poor angles and the wrong spot and had some poor fundamentals and some poor fits. So the effort level was not a question on either side.

Obviously a defensive question. When you analyze it and you kind of see what’s going on, what can you pinpoint do you think that’s going on? Is it schematics, is it personnel, is it a combination, is it coaching, like what do you think it is?

I would say it’s everything. I mean I don’t, there’s nothing, if it were that easy it would be fixed tomorrow, but it’s not. To just say it’s one thing or if we do this then we will be a really good defense. I think guys that have been here for two and three years should be able to play man-to-man coverage and quarters coverage. So that’s, the coaches, we need to up hold our end of the bargain in terms of the techniques and the players need to up hold their end by employing those techniques on gameday. And so again, schematically, personnel-wise, I’m never going to say it’s personnel. We’re going to have really good players at The University of Texas. Now, how experienced are they, how developed physically and mentally and from a technique standpoint, that’s only time can handle experience and we as coaches can handle the development part.

Obviously the sign of a well-coached team is week-to-week improvement, but with six starters out, whatever, you had both your veteran safeties on the sideline the final seven minutes of the game. How do you measure that? I mean how, what is week-to-week success in those conditions?

Well it’s not 48 points and 500-some-odd yards, I can tell you that, that’s not success. The one thing we can’t or will not coach is effort, and we are playing with a tremendous amount of effort. Now it’s on us to figure out with the personnel that we do have what do they do well and enhance it, where are they deficient and either improve it or eliminate that from the game plan. And then again, it’s on the players to then do what they’re coached to do. And that comes back to a belief and again it all circles back to coaching. It all does. Because players that have great relationships with their position coaches, their coordinator, their head coach, players that have tremendous amount of buy-in usually do the right thing at the right time. To be quite honest with you, one of our biggest issues right now is there’s some guys that try to do too much and you got to say, hey, just do your job, just do it the way you’re coached to do it and you got to trust that the other 10 guys that are out there are doing that as well.

Update us on Caden Sterns and Whittington. And also we talked to Ossai and Roach, and they were, they owned the performance, but they also said that they need to do as good a job as leading – of leading than they have done. What can your leaders do amid all the injuries and amid all the struggles?

I think I’ve already seen it. There’s ‚Äì well, let me answer the first part of your question. Caden Sterns is not going to be available this week. He’s still progressing, he’s running on hard ground, but he’s going to be a week-to-week deal. J Whit is improving, looked good yesterday. I would say this week is probably pretty questionable unless he takes a marked turn for the better, but optimistic that we’re probably only about a week away with him.

And then as far as the defensive leadership, yeah, there’s three leaders, the two captains and Joseph Ossai has definitely emerged as a young leader of that group. When families are hit with adversity, there’s only two possible outcomes. You either come together more and become stronger or you splinter and you separate and you fracture. And I think that they’re doing a really good job as leaders on that side of the ball of making sure that everybody is coming together, everybody is rowing the boat in the same direction. Everybody sees the issues, addresses the issues, and then are taking the necessary steps to improve.

Can you update us on Brandon Jones?

Yeah, hang on a second. Let me find him on here. Brandon, yeah, he is limited practice, so I’m sure will be out of contact, but if we were to play tomorrow, he would play.

Second, when you got here and you were pointing out your long-term goals in terms of depth. How important, what kind of priority do you place on that and do you feel now that you’re getting to where you want to be and you talked about closing that gap to become kind of the national power, how vital is depth in that?

Critical. And you’re seeing it. I had our training staff do a study through seven games. We actually have eight less documented injuries this year, 107 less missed practices. They just all happened to be in one position this year and it gets a bit frustrating when that kind of snowballs at certain positions. But it was running back in training camp and early and now it’s safety. But that’s why you recruit the way you do, because you’re going to be forced to play young guys and those young guys better be talented enough to go out there and win games for you and perform to the level, again, that we talked about, the standard that is set at the University of Texas. So it’s why recruiting is so important. And your miss percentage has to be pretty low in terms of recruiting. You’ve got to make sure that you are hitting on guys like T’Vondre Sweat and guys like Jake Smith and guys like Tyler Owens and Chris Adimora that when, oh my gosh, we got four safeties that are hurt. All right, Chris and Tyler, time to get you guys cranked up this week and not staying up all night going, oh, my gosh, I don’t know if these guys can physically do it. They can physically do it at this point, so it’s our job as coaches to make sure that mentally they’re ready to go.

The last drive was a pretty good example of this, but now that Collin’s healthy what do he and Devin provide for this offense?

Yeah, I think maybe the missing, maybe or the overlooked part of the offense, one is we’re obviously running the ball better than we have at any point in the last two years here. And then two, we’re incorporating the field receiver a lot more in the throw game. Brennan Eagles is a legitimate threat that you have to be concerned with. But those two seniors, it’s ‚Äì what do they provide? I mean, just a hopefully that coupled with their talent and ability level coupled with our ability to run the ball and Brennan’s ability to defeat man-to-man coverage makes defensive coordinators hopefully ponder long and hard on how they’re going to choose to defend us on a week-to-week basis.

Besides playing with effort over the past two weeks what have you seen your team get better at?

That’s a good question. I mean we have continued to ‚Äì well we didn’t get better at very much anything two weeks ago, I can tell you that. So to say ‚Äì I don’t know what you mean over the last two weeks. So we didn’t get better when we went in to play Oklahoma. I thought we got better offensively this week of, as good as we have been on third down, we probably got a little bit better there. And then I was proud of our tight red zone execution offensively. And then if you want to look at plays of the game, defensively the blocked kicks were a huge swing in point differential.

Can we talk about TCU? They have not won in almost a month, uncharacteristically they have lost two in a row and their defense is giving up big points. Your thoughts on TCU and what have you seen in the film that has impressed you about Gary Patterson’s team?

Yeah, I don’t know that their defense is giving up big points. I know probably that the SMU game sticks out to everybody, but SMU had some pretty short fields. Other than that, their defense played pretty well. I felt good, actually this morning knowing, oh, okay, we, last year’s team beat them 31-16 and we’re into the third quarter watching that game, re-watching that game from last year, and I’m saying, when did we score all these points again? I had forgotten that they had kicked our butts offensively for a good two and a half quarters until late in the third quarter when our defense actually gave us some really good field position and we capitalized on it. But number 90 is a load. He’s as good a defensive tackle as we’ll play this year. No. 6, their nickel, is a really, really active player. So they’re going to be really, really well-coached defensively and they are. I know they’re still finding their way a little bit at the quarterback position. But Darius is having a great season behind four senior offensive linemen and Jalen Reagor is as electric as they come., so I don’t know, if you’re asking why they lost two in a row, that’s a better question for Coach Patterson. But I do know that they’re going to play really, really well and hard on defense, be very difficult to scheme against, and then especially with Reagor and Anderson, they have got two really explosive players on offense too.

You talked about the Texas standard. Because you do have so many young guys playing now, do you have to hammer home to them that the bar is not being lowered, by you or inside –

Yeah, I think you do. Again, our job is to defeat human nature every day as coaches. And human nature, if you’re a young player on defense, is to say, well, I’m young and I’m just trying to figure this out, Coach, and I’m just trying to get my feet wet or whatever. I mean human nature is to blame, complain, and defend yourself. Blame other people, complain about your circumstances, and defend yourself. And we have to constantly educate them that there isn’t. It’s like when we first got here about the talking about the price of a championship and it is really, really expensive in terms of your time, effort and energy. And that price will never come down, ever. And it’s the same thing about the standard of the level of play here at the University of Texas, that regardless of who we jog out on the field, that standard is expected to be met.

You haven’t been asked about special teams in a while. What’s been your thoughts about the return game? And how do you think D’Shawn handled some of adventurous returns?

No I thought the first one, I mean, I hope you saw the, how excited we were. We literally teach that if you’re going to catch it on the sideline, to straddle, put your foot out of bounds and then it’s immediately you get it on the 35. And he did exactly what we were coaching him to do and we were really proud of that. I made sure when we scored that first touchdown on the opening drive, I said that was because of you, man. We had the ball 65 yards away instead of 75 yards away and that was a big difference. I thought he did great. The only one that sticks out is the one right by the pylon that he should have let go in terms of he was really close to catching it in the field of play and then stepping out rather than catching it and go out of the side of the end zone. So still a work in progress, yeah, the return game has not been good. My charge this week, much like last week in terms of getting back to our roots, we‚Äôve got to play more starters on special teams. And so you’ll see more of the combos, the linebacker, running backs and the skill guys, should see a lot more starters on that. And again, if we have got a talent advantage we should be using it in the special teams as well and hopefully we can get some of those returns cranked up. I think in this day and age, you look at all the statistics in the day and age of now touchbacks being at the 25 yard line, returning a kickoff even from one or two yards deep in the end zone, even if you’re Devin Duvernay, is probably not statistically the right move, because there’s 10 other guys that got to do their job perfectly for you to have a chance. So just evaluating that I think you’ll see us keep the ball in more, just from a statistical point of reference. But in the kickoff return game, if it’s caught around the five yard line we better be able to get it to at least the 25.

Cade Brewer had a really productive game in the past game Saturday. Is that an element you want more out of? Did it just work into Saturday and his effectiveness being able to stretch the field like he did in the fourth quarter?

Yeah, just, we know what Cade can do. I don’t think, you know, it’s, we’re throwing the ball pretty good through seven games and to say that we have got to change or add to our repertoire or anything like that would be a bit silly. So we knew all along what Cade could do and it just so happened that a couple of those plays were we had very advantageous looks to run them and we called plays and he executed.

One more defensive one and I’ll give you a positive one. Are you still confident within the scheme that you guys are running? Do you still feel like this is effective? Do you have any concerns that maybe other teams have caught up to what your guys are doing? And then the positive one is can you talk about Keaontay and him kind of having more of a little bit of a huge impact in that game?

Yeah, I think we’re confident. I think you always worry that if you don’t evolve that the teams are going to catch up, so to speak. But I do think look no further than the defense that we’re playing this week. Last time I checked, Gary Patterson has been a four-down quarters coverage team for the last 20 years and they have had pretty successful defenses doing it. So I don’t think pressing the reset button is necessarily always the answer. I think you have got to believe in something, master that something, become a ‚Äì what you don’t want to ever be on either side of the ball is Jack of all trades and master of none, which, when you are struggling, is, again, human nature, I mean we did it offensively in 2017. It’s just like, what can we do to move the ball? And I think that as coaches you get frustrated at times and you start grab-bagging and that’s when you see things go downhill and that was my charge to the defensive staff yesterday, was believe in something, know the weaknesses and the strengths of that and get better at it and improve and teach. And they’re all on the same page. Keaontay, yes, it was good to see him get rolling again. I think, John, you told me it was the first time Texas had ever had a 390-yard passer, a 100-yard receiver and a 100-yard running back in the same game. So that was good to see kind of all cylinders, so to speak. And he’s a big part of that. And when he’s going and is understanding and his vision is on point I think you see the kind of back that he can be.

Couple questions, wanted to get your thoughts on the offensive line Saturday. Your thoughts on their performance, what you liked, what you didn’t like, and where that group can grow. And not that you don’t ever know, obviously field position goes into things like fourth down calls or coming off the goal line, but with the way the defense was struggling how much now do you balance out the risk of putting the defense on a short field versus kind of being who you are and staying true to who you are?

Yeah, surprisingly, you guys love it talk about the binder, right? I mean the binder, actually all of those analytics in terms of your defensive performance, your offense’s success rate, the defense that you’re playing against, what their success rate is, the yard line, the time in the game, the score of the game, I mean, it’s a very complex formula that I don’t always listen to it when it’s told to me. More so, believe it or not on, the conservative side in terms of doing some of the things that it recommends to do. But I do think that there needs to be a common sense deal there. We have got to do a better job of coaching our guys to execute those plays that we should be able to convert fourth and two, which we did once. But I do think there is, certainly with any of those decisions, an element of how the other side of the ball is playing. But again, we’re, you’re also talking about the risk of a touchback and you’re on the 39 yard line. You’re talking about a, whatever it is, a 19-yard net difference for an opportunity to extend a drive. So there’s a lot of factors that go into each one, but to say that factoring in how the other side of the ball is playing would be accurate. What was the first part?

(No microphone.)

Yeah, good enough. In that game. I think overall we’re playing better than we have in our last three years here. It’s hard as a coach because you get the really bad ones stuck in your brain and you forget all the really good ones. But anytime you can rush for 200 yards, and I think we have done it now three times this year or something like that, three or four, you would say, hey, okay, we’re playing pretty well.