Texas Longhorns College Football Pregame Quote, 11/04/2019

Really refreshing to have the open week where it was. I know our players got to get away, go home. Most of them did. We gave them Friday after classes off, all day Saturday and had a late check-in on Sunday, and you could tell that a lot of those guys, especially the young guys, had just really, really hit a wall lately in terms of the daily grind of college football, and really not the football, it’s everything else. It’s the study hall, it’s the classes, it’s the time management. It’s the difficulty of the classes that they’re in.

And so to be able to take a deep breath and kind of regroup for this stretch run I think was very timely, and again, we’ve got a chance to get some guys healthy. I’m sure you guys are interested. Jeffrey McCulloch, we’re going to try like heck to get him back into practice. He has not practiced. Kind of was on a really good trajectory with the strength in that shoulder, and it just didn’t quite keep progressing. But we think there’s a chance to get him into practice by Tuesday or Wednesday. B.J. Foster would certainly be probable. DeMarvion Overshown, about like Jeff, but he is cleared to practice, still a little bit weak in that shoulder, but we’re hoping that these next 24, 48 hours speeds that up. Caden Sterns I would list as probable. He practiced on Sunday. He practiced I think Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. And then Jordan Whittington, the same thing, practiced yesterday and practiced Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

Excited about Kansas State coming in. A team that’s right there in the hunt for a conference championship game bid just like we are. We’re going to have two teams here in Austin with a lot to play for. I know our guys are extremely excited to be back home and extremely excited to fix some of the things that ailed us in previous weeks and show each other that we’re capable of going out and putting together a good, impressive victory.

Questions?

I know the bye weeks are a chance to examine your team analytically. What hard questions did you ask yourself as head coach, and also what was the tenor of your conversations with your assistants?

The tenor was that nobody ‚Äì that there’s a level of expectation at The University of Texas in all three phases, and we’re not quite achieving that. We’re not firing on all cylinders. And so it’s our job to figure out why and figure out what the players that we’re playing with do best and put them in the best position to be successful.

I ask myself hard questions every day, and I hope anybody that’s worth a salt does. So to tell you specifically what I asked myself, I don’t know. I ask myself hard questions every day. But there was a deep dive into, hey, what can we do really, really well with the players that we plan on having here these next four weeks.

When you have a guy like Caden Sterns and there’s multiple guys that could be back, can you expect them to play like the Caden Sterns that we know, or how long does it take for Caden and DeMarvion and all these guys that are coming back from injury to actually play like that?

I don’t know. I don’t know how ‚Äì we would expect them if they’re cleared, then they’re medically cleared, so I don’t know what would be the holdup. I’m asking like an explanation maybe.

You’ve been so depleted in the secondary. If you get these guys back and we see them, that they’re on the roster, do you have the same expectations that, okay, we’re not depleted anymore?

I mean, I have the expectation that if you play in the football game for the University of Texas that you’re going to go out and be able to play at the standard like we just talked about that is expected around here.

With November being a blank canvas, four games left, this thing can go any which way. What in your mind do you think this team is truly capable of doing in the last month?

Going 1-0 against Kansas State.

Can you talk about Skylar Thompson, the Kansas State quarterback?

I think Skylar Thompson is actually really thriving in this new offensive system. I think when you see them, you see obviously two backs, they’re going to play with a fullback, multiple tight ends, so you think it’s a very conventional old-school offense, and it’s not. They’re very creative in what they do and the schemes that they run. It’s kind of fun to watch. It’s very unique. Obviously it’ll challenge our defense, being that it’s the first of its kind that we’ve really seen all season. And you know, he’s kind of like most quarterbacks in this league – he’s the gas that makes their engine go. We’ve got to account for him in the run game and certainly in the throw game.

But the unique thing that they do is they line up in these big personnel groups, a fullback, two tight ends, one wide receiver, two wide receivers, but yet they’re in the gun, and they’re still reading somebody and making sure that they can equate the numbers in the run game. You’ll see them go under center a little bit, but it’s very unique in what they do from a scheme standpoint in terms of something that we haven’t seen, so I know having the two ‚Äì this is the first time in our three years here that we’ve ever had a bye week prior to playing an opponent that didn’t have one. So it’s been nice to have that extra game of film on them, a recent game, and it’s been nice to have the two weeks to prepare for what amounts to a very, very talented quarterback and a very unique system. And yet we practice ‚Äì I’m just giving you a hard time. We practice trick plays or special plays all the time. When they get called, I don’t know, but we go into a game with four or five of them that are complements to what we’re planning on majoring in that week.

You said last week that you all in part were working on relationships. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more and maybe what you feel was accomplished in that?

Well, it was a nice opportunity for me. I met with ‚Äì I think I’ve still got two or three left to go, but the class of 2019 had their coaches make a 10-play cut-up, whether it’s practice or if it’s a guy playing, carved out 30, 45 minutes to meet with each guy and really coach. I miss ‚Äì as a head coach, I miss coaching players. It was really good to kind of reacquaint myself with those guys individually.

All of them are in great spirits. All of them ‚Äì again, it’s a very personal decision whether a young man can or should graduate high school early and come in January, but when you look at the success that some of those guys are having on and off the field that got here in January, much different mindset from a guy that just gets here in June and all of a sudden you’re thrust into two months of very intense summer conditioning and then a training camp that’s harder and more time-consuming than you could have ever imagined, and then, oh, by the way, you’ve got to take 15 hours at The University of Texas. You’ve never taken a college class other than the online summer school class that you took or whatever. And it wears on you.

But all of them were in great spirits in terms of moving forward. They’ve all assured me that they understand that they’ve got to fight through this, that a lot of those guys that are playing especially need to be the same kind of player that we saw week 2 and week 3, and again, I think the off week or open date really, really helped.

I think my relationships with the guys in that class were solidified a bit, and then I think we’ve got to continue to foster the relationships between our older guys and our younger guys. You know, I talked to the leadership council yesterday and asked them to raise your hand if you live on campus, and there were only three, and they were the three sophomores that are in there – Joseph Ossai, Keaontay Ingram and Caden Sterns. It’s those older guys’ challenge, when they’re ‚Äì this is a very precious time with a lot of these young guys, and they’ve got to make the most of it when they’re here in this building. They’ve got to be very intentional with it, and we’ve also got to have some of those, what I’ve started calling bridge guys. Sam Ehlinger said when Andrew Beck was whatever he was, a seventh-year senior, when he talked, the freshmen listened. I said, I know, because he had a sophomore Sam Ehlinger. He had a junior Zach Shackelford that was ‚Äì he had a starting redshirt freshman right tackle in Sam Cosmi that could bridge that gap of age and experience.

So we’ve challenged some of those guys that are going to be really good leaders for us, some of those younger guys, to make sure that we continue to bridge that gap from older guys to younger guys.

With the week off, do you go into the mode of discarding some stuff or simplifying what do we do these things well and try to cut out the other stuff?

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of self-scout that goes on, probably a little bit more in an open week than normal. But we’re constantly trying to do that. I mean, in this game, you never want to be a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, but you also have to have enough variety so that you’re not a sitting target, if you will.

I think the biggest challenge offensively, and I just left a meeting where we feel like we got a lot of closure and condensing of the game plan, their opponents’ offense, Kansas State’s opponents’ offenses are averaging 58 plays a game. They’re third in the country in time of possession. And they’re four-down quarters, they mix in some one high, and they pressure about 20 percent of the time.

You know, you certainly know what front they’re going to be in, and so the tendency of offensive coaches is, hey, we can do this against that, we can do this, we can do this and we can do that, and it’s like, we didn’t even call those. We’re not going to have that many plays. So I think we did a really good job ‚Äì we always break down 1st and 2nd down and in the open field first, and we figure we’re going to get about 25 calls maybe in this game, maybe 30 at most. And so you’ve got to be very selective and get really good at what you’re going to do, and then we’ll start watching some 3rd down and red zone after that and try like heck to keep it simple.

Is the confidence shaking at all with the TCU game and the close loss to Kansas? Do you have to remind them they’re a good team? How is your confidence?

We beat Kansas. You said close loss to Kansas.

I apologize, close win.

Freudian slip. No, there is no confidence shaken whatsoever. These guys all realize what they can be. They realize that there’s a lot of reasons why they haven’t been that, and then we’ve just continued to chop away at giving them the tools necessary to achieve at the level that we all think that they can.

I mean, I thought we had a great ‚Äì for an open date- – practice Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday was awesome. It was awesome. Yesterday’s spirits were great, and I would imagine tomorrow will be much of the same. I mean, they’re ‚Äì to Brian’s point, I don’t think anybody is oblivious to what’s in front of us in terms of our only long-term goal, which is competing for ‚Äì being in the mix for ‚Äì our conference’s championship in the months of November and December, and that’s still all out there.

You know, we’ve left the margin of error very slim, and that’s okay. But we know ‚Äì I think I said Wednesday, we’re on the ropes. You can do one of two things. You can fight your way off the ropes or you can tell your trainer to throw in the towel. And from all accounts, everybody is pushing in the same direction saying, we want to fight our way off the ropes, and it’s been a really good week and a half.

Speaking of confidence, K-State has got to feel pretty confident coming in, OU and then impressive win at a sellout rival game. Do you sense that from opponents, too, that they’re playing with confidence? Can that kind of help them play maybe ‚Äì I don’t want to say above their head, but ‚Äì

Yeah, I don’t know that you can ever get in their head and talk about the psyche of another team because you’re just not around them enough. But I do know this: If they’re not confident, they should be. I mean, they’re playing really, really well right now. On both sides of the football, they’re playing really good, complementary football offensively and defensively in terms of they’re holding on to the ball. Offensively they’re not giving up a whole lot of points, defensively or big plays.

Yeah, I don’t know what their psyche is as a team, but I do know that they’re playing really, really well in all facets right now.

For so long Sam was really so clean with the football, suddenly a rash of turnovers. Are you seeing anything there in terms of his decision making? Is it misreads with receivers on routes? What’s kind of been the root behind the turnovers?

Yeah, no issues. I had an issue with one throw. It’s much like I try to explain to everybody – everybody wants to look at sacks and say the O-line stinks. Everybody wants to look at interceptions and say the quarterback stinks or had a bad game. He made one bad decision, that was the throw to Jared Wiley on the sideline when he was scrambled, should have thrown it out of bounds instead of pressing and trying to fit that one in. The other two were receiver errors, and the last one on 4th down in a two-minute situation, the ball has got to come out of your hand and you hope your guy can go make a play.

He’s fine in terms of mentally. As a quarterback you hate to see those numbers on the stat sheet, but I think we all know decision making, other than the one throw to Jared on the sideline, that his decisions were spot-on.

A guy like Danny Young who’s played in four games but hasn’t played the last two weeks, is that a coach’s decision, or are you guys saving him for a redshirt?

Coach’s decision, I hadn’t even thought about it. I appreciate you bringing it up. I’m going to go talk to Coach Drayton and Coach Beck when we go finish this. But Danny has not expressed that to us, or at least to myself. It hasn’t come across my desk yet. So no, we haven’t had any kind of discussions about redshirting.

And then coaching-wise, what is your personal philosophy on using time-outs to ice kickers? Do you think that works or do you try to get in people’s heads? What are your thoughts when you try to ice kickers?

Well, I wish I would have called the one earlier. Nowadays those guys are trained pretty well to ‚Äì even though the whistle blows to snap it and kick it and kind of get a practice kick at it. Should have called it a little bit earlier so he wouldn’t have had the opportunity, but they don’t carry over into the second half. So if you can do anything to ‚Äì that’s such a routine-oriented position in terms of your steps and your ‚Äì everything that you do in terms of your setup, it’s very much like a golf swing where you’re going to grip the club a certain way, you’re going to dig your cleat in a certain way. I do think that anything you can do that doesn’t ‚Äì there’s no cost benefit in terms of, well, I could have saved them until the second half. You don’t get them; they go away at halftime. The only thing I would have done different is called it earlier to try to get him out of his routine, but I think it makes sense if you’re that little amount of time left, if having those time-outs is not going to benefit you, you might as well try to get him out of routine.

Of your missing players, probably none has had more focus than Caden. Assuming you get him back, what is he bringing to your defensive backfield to clean up what you’ve been missing?

Well, obviously experience. I get the question. He’s just ‚Äì like you guys saw most of last season, he’s just got a knack for the football. He doesn’t mind throwing his body around at all. Extremely smart football player. You know, usually when you say a defender has got a knack for the ball, that means he is pretty smart, very well prepared. He’s going to study every tendency of receiver splits, backfield sets, and be able to translate those studies into gaining a half step or a step on certain plays.

Just that experience, that level of confidence, and his ability to be disruptive back there I think are all things that will certainly be happy to have back.

Saturday is the annual veterans recognition game. How important is this game for your team and your players and the significance of it?

Yeah, I mean, it’s huge. Any time ‚Äì I think we’ve done it every year to honor those men and women that have served our country and allowed us, even just the freedom to watch a college football game, the freedom to play college football, the freedom to go to college, period, are all on the shoulders and the backs of the men and women that fight for the freedom of this country, and any chance, any opportunity that we can to show our appreciation for that I think is really neat.