Texas Longhorns College Football Pregame Quote, 11/11/2019

Excited about the win, obviously. Much needed. I thought our guys responded really, really well to the early adversity in that game. Again, part of being on the ropes is you don’t get off of ’em with one game, just one win but to beat a top-25 team the way that we did in terms of holding them to 51 yards rushing, and us rushing for 214 yards, getting the ball back with 6:45 on the clock and ending the game with double zeros and a win showed a lot of fortitude by our players.

That being said we’ve got to move on. We’ve got another road test against a very good, well-coached, experienced Iowa State team. Their backs are ‚Äì they probably feel like their backs are against the wall a little bit, too. We’re going to have to prepare even better this week than we did last week.

Injury updates: Junior Angilau will be out – MCL, not an ACL – so he will be week-to-week. I think best case scenario would be the week after Iowa State, but we will know a lot more as that progresses.

Collin Johnson tweaked his hamstring on the last drive in a different spot, not as bad, so we’re going to aggressively treat him right now and see how he feels in the next couple of days.

Surprisingly good news: Friday before the game Chris Brown went to see the doctor that had done his surgery, and it healed faster than he anticipated and cleared him right there on Friday to play with a cast on. So obviously he hadn’t practiced all week, so we dressed him and if all heck broke loose, we might have jogged him in the game but to know that we’re going to have him here this week is a big boost to our defense and to special teams.

Jeffrey McCulloch is progressing better these last couple of days than the first few days of the week, last week. DeMarvion Overshown is cleared, still dealing with some pain issues so we will see how that progresses, and Jordan Whittington is cleared. We’ve just got to get him to run through some of the soreness and get him back up to max velocity. All three of those guys we expect to play if they progress.

Tom, in four of your six conference games this year you don’t have a touchdown in the first quarter. I’m curious if you consider what y’all are doing getting off to a slow start or if you’re good with where you stand, early, first-halves of most of your conference games.

I didn’t even realize. It’s not something we talked about.

Do you think you’re getting off to a slow start offensively, or do you feel confident with the way things are starting early in the games?

Hadn’t really thought about it. I know we’ve won four of those conference games, and two of them, TCU and Kansas State, probably two of, if not the two best defenses in our conference. It’s not something we’ve actively talked about.

After the 14-0 deficit the defense was nails. After watching films what jumps off the screen to you why that happened? With that said, how important is it for that unit to get some confidence before they head on the road?

It’s huge, especially considering what Kansas State had been doing to people the last couple of weeks and what it looked like they were going to be doing to us.

We settled down. We played much better on first and second down. I thought our D-line played really well in terms of the penetration and push they got creating much more third and manageable situations for our defense, and we executed.

You don’t go in ‚Äì you go into a game plan and you say, okay, here is the three or four first and second down calls that we’re going to call without a blitz, here is maybe the three blitzes on first and second down and that’s what you practice all week.

It’s not like when things are going poorly you’re going to start drawing stuff in the dirt and calling things you haven’t practiced. So the calls were all the same. I think our guys settled down, and I think Malcolm Roach and Brandon Jones and Joseph Ossai, those three guys, their leadership was invaluable in that situation. When things weren’t looking really good, to have those guys be as confident to their teammates as they were was a big part of that.

At the end of the day, we stopped the run, we kept ’em in second and long, third and long, and we executed.

Using four instead of three on certain run fits?

No, it was ‚Äì when they go 12 and sometimes 22 personnel, we wanted some beef in there, in those heavy sets. We’ve actually played with four D-linemen on the goal in short yardage.

And to follow up on what Dennis was asking, Todd made a pretty passionate, for him, defense of the scheme and sticking with it and keep fighting. He talked about that last Wednesday. Has that been your message internally to the guys defensively, is that, you know, trust in the scheme, trust in what you guys are teaching them and trust that this is the right thing to do going forward.

Yeah and there is no other choice, right? If you don’t, you’re doomed to fail. So you’re not going to change anything in the middle of a season from a schematic standpoint, from a philosophical standpoint. This is what we are, this is what we believe in, and we’re going to try our best within the framework of the system to put you into situations to be successful and, you know, we gotta coach you better and you guys gotta buy in and trust it, and I think, you know, for three quarters you saw the fruits of that.

Seems like there were times when y’all didn’t have the tight end on the field and brought in Malcolm Epps as your fourth receiver. What went into that addition and what does Malcolm bring to that position and will we see more of that going forward?

I think you will see more of that going forward. With Cade out, you know, obviously Reese graded out as a champion, played really good, but is not quite the guy that Cade is out in space, not his strength, so with Cade out, if we wanted to get out in space and some detached formations we figured it was best to jog another receiver in, especially on third down. I thought our guys did well. Malcolm – it affords us the ability to get Collin in the slot, too.

Technically in that personnel grouping Collin plays the “Y” and Malcolm plays the “X” so it’s, again, a way for us to get Collin some snaps in the slot, and in the pass game, but also have some better athletes out there for the perimeter blocking, too, on some of the perimeter ‚Äì the bubble screens, the speed option we ran, stuff like that.

Tom, you spoke of misinformation after the win being printed about your team. What put it on your heart to make that statement, given you’ve always said outside noise doesn’t matter to you guys?

I was just trying to educate our fans, really, as to what to believe and whatnot to believe. I pay no mind to it, I really don’t. Again, if you want proof of how this team is doing, watch the game. You saw a team Saturday afternoon that was completely united, loved each other, played really, really hard for each other. So that was it, just hopefully our fans can be cautious with what they choose to believe.

Coach, kind of a burst of speed out of Keaontay that we hadn’t seen throughout the season so far. He talked before about not being 100% healthy. Do you think he is healthy now? What would you attribute that to? And you saw from that right side of the line with Okafor and Kerstetter.

Keaontay, yeah, strength. The dude is pushing 230 pounds right now, squatting more than he ever has in his life and power cleaning more than he ever has in his life. When you can do that, you’re going to see an added burst. As far as his health, in week 11 or whatever we’re in, if you count training camp, we’re in week 15, week 16, if there is a running back in the country that’s healthy, you’re going to have to show him to me.

But I think the nagging part of that knee deal is finally subsided to the point where he feels pretty fresh.

Then the right side of the line was serviceable. Obviously when you rush for 214 yards against that defense, and you go 22 of 29 in the throw game you’re doing something right, but we only had one O-lineman grade out at championship level in Zach Shackelford, but I think it will be helpful now, especially for Derek, to have a whole week of practice at guard and the communication with Denzel and all those things, so I thought it was, you know, plenty good enough for us to do the things that we wanted to do and did do.

But it really was good. It was exciting for the fans; it really jacked up the fans with the pass, the touchdowns. Question about Brock Purdy: Another week, another great quarterback. What do you see in him? You spent time at Iowa State as an assistant coach. What is the distaste for Texas? Is that a big game for the Iowa State fans?

The first question, Brock Purdy, that’s life in the Big 12, right? You go from great quarterback to great quarterback. I think last year when he kind of burst on the scene ‚Äì I think last year was his freshman year, right? You could tell he had a lot of moxie, you could tell he could run around and make plays. I think what he’s doing right now, he’s the sixth leading passer in the country right now in terms of yards per game.

You can tell there’s a lot of comfort in the offense and he’s standing back there and throwing the ball really, really well.

I don’t know what their attitudes in Ames are toward Texas. I’m worried about Texas, to be honest with you. But when I was there, every game was big.

You’re in your third year now at UT and after last game you mentioned that you and your staff know what you signed up for, joining UT. And I wanted to get your opinion on what it’s like being in the third year at this program as a head coach and I guess, what is different about it in comparison to your previous experience at Houston where you were two years there and now you’re in your third year?

Yeah, not a whole lot. Again, the expectations from our fans, from the media, any of that, they’re never going to be as high adds what’s inside of our building. We have tremendously high expectations for what we deem successful in terms of our level of play, our level of recruiting, our level of representing this university.

I don’t think it’s any different, to be honest with you. I think it could be, if you let ‚Äì as Cedric mentioned, if you let the outside noise affect you, both when it’s really, really good and really bad, because it can be a bit louder here, the outside noise, than a lot of places.

I think we have done a really good job as a program of tuning that out and turning up the volume of the messages that are being conveyed within our program.

Tom, I know you mentioned a little bit on your conference call but will you be doing anything different practice-wise to adjust to lower temperatures in Ames this week?

No. I don’t know what you do? Thankfully it’s going to be pretty chilly tomorrow for practice so our guys will practice outside. But, again, temperature is way down the list in terms of things that ‚Äì weather phenomenon that you gotta deal with when it comes to football. We’ve got sweats and tight and gloves. They will be fine. They will be running around, I’m sure we will have heaters on the sidelines.

You don’t ever alter or think of the impact of temperature, alter your game plan or think of the impact of temperature. 20 mile-an-hour wind, that will affect some of what you do; sideways rain, that will affect what you do, but cold is ‚Äì it doesn’t really affect your game plan whatsoever.

Tom, couple questions about your special teams. One, I guess you finally got the big punt return that proved beneficial for you the other day?

Two plays later scored a touchdown, yeah.

And Dicker talked to the work he had to do this week. Were you calculating that through that whole, I guess, late-game scenario?

No. We’ve got a ton of confidence in those guys. They’ve obviously ‚Äì the holder hadn’t done it very much in live situations, but to those guys, especially where we were on the field, that’s a little farther than an extra point, so you do ‚Äì when you have a kicker and a battery, if you will, that’s been as good as they have, it is a luxury.

It’s like when we had the punter a couple of years ago that won the Ray Guy award. I mean, that is a weapon. Same thing, we jogged him out there to try for a 55-yard field goal, with a breeze in his face, because we thought he could make it.

Very confident in those guys, and obviously the punt return, good individual effort by Brandon, certainly, but if you want to see a guy embody the level of effort and tenacity that we want all of our players to play with, go watch Roschon Johnson on that play. It’s impressive. I say that because obviously it took a lot of other guys to make that play happen, not just Brandon, but he certainly did his part.

On the kickoff return, have you identified what happened there? I’m wondering since the change of the rule for the fair catches, if that creates a scenario where you have to guard against an expectation that teams are going to do that, that there might be a natural ‚Äì for a kickoff team to expect a fair catch and not be ready for the return.

And when your kicker has been kicking touchbacks all night long, too. So there is the human element, certainly, and we have to really fight it, you know, because a lot of those guys that are playing on that coverage team are young and inexperienced. So we had one big missed assignment on it and we had a couple guys not compressing to the ball the way they need to do and got exposed.

Lesson learned for some of those young guys in terms of the level of effort and physicality that’s necessary rep after rep after rep on that unit.

Tom, Keondre Coburn said that the defense settling in was the result of Sterns and Foster being back. What does Chris Brown bring? Arguably he was one of your best defensive players in the first four games of the year.

Oh, yeah. Just ‚Äì the guy flies around, he’s physical as all get out. We’ll see with a giant cast on your hand, if he can pick off any passes or hopefully he can find a way to wrap guys up, tackling them. I think just his energy is contagious when he’s out there. I know he was ‚Äì before he got injured, we don’t have captains on special teams but we call them “field general” and he was the leader of the special forces unit and then obviously had worked himself into being a starter on defense, really, because of the value early in our tenure here that he provided on special teams, and it was like, we’re going to have a hard time keeping this guy off the field. But the biggest thick that sticks out to me with Chris is energy and physicality.

Tom, tight end is not always the topic that comes up with the opposition. What kind of match-up is Kolar?

Difficult. They’re just so physical in the pass game, you know, even so much so that we didn’t have pads on yet, and we’re sitting there talking to B.J. and Caden and Brandon about, these guys are going to flipper you and shove you and try to body you up, and we’ve got to ‚Äì when we’re in position, we’ve got to stand our ground on some of those option routes and, you know, spot routes, stuff like that.

They do a heck of a job getting them the football, too, in terms of the play design to get them the football. Then the run game is just as significant.

Roschon has done well and everyone is excited to see Jordan Whittington come back, but Saturday do you think Keaontay was trying to prove, hey, I’m still here, and I want to still be the guy?

No. Keaontay is the ultimate team player. He played really well. I think he’s getting comfortable back there, but he’s got nothing to prove to anybody.

With the balanced offense you showed Saturday and the defensive improvement, is that the team that you envisioned all year? How do you think you will do on the road where you have had mixed results this year?

Yeah, I think so. I think playing complementary football the way that we did, to be able to beat Kansas State the way that we did in terms of time of possession and running the football and stopping the run, I think, is exciting. Obviously we’ve got to replicate that throughout these coming weeks. It’s harder to win on the road; that’s why they call it a home field advantage.

If you allow the climate to be a distraction, that can be a hindrance, as well, and knowing from my time there the fan support is phenomenal that they get there, and they will be packed in there, and it will be loud.

But we have proven ‚Äì we feel like West Virginia’s atmosphere is really dang good, too, and we played well there. We didn’t play real good in Fort Worth, but I think our guys ‚Äì it’s harder to win on the road, there is no doubt, but it’s not something we lower our expectations because of.