Texas Longhorns College Football Pregame Quote, 09/30/2019

Good to see you guys again. It was nice to have the week off. Always good to go into the bye week with a win under your belt. We got a little rest as coaches on Saturday. The players were obviously off on Saturday. Practiced again yesterday and they’re off again today, normal game week schedule this week. Pleased with how they handled the open date. We got our developmental guys quite a bit of scrimmage work, about 60-to-70 snaps between Tuesday and Wednesday of scrimmage work, and I felt like our older guys got better as we asked them to.

Injury update: B.J. (Foster) practiced yesterday so I would put him as probable. Collin (Johnson) and DeMarvion (Overshown) are going to try to practice tomorrow as it stands right now, and we will know a lot more about their status after tomorrow’s practice. Jordan Whittington is just now starting to run on the ground. I don’t know that this weekend is out of the question, but we’re certainly not expecting him to be cleared for this one.

Coach, with the secondary beaten up right now, what’s the confidence ‚Äì you’ve recruited well, developed well. How much confidence do you take for them to hold the fort this next month while people heal up?

I don’t know that it’s a ‘hold the fort’ mentality. We’ve got Chris Brown, we’ve got Brandon Jones, both those guys were, in the first four weeks, definitely our two biggest playmakers. D’Shawn Jamison had worked his way into a quasi-starter at the other corner. We’re going to miss those guys for the length of time they’re out ‚Äì Caden (Sterns), Josh (Thompson) and Jalen (Green) – but we’re pretty confident with the guys that we will be rolling out there this Saturday and for the weeks coming forward.

I don’t know if you had a chance to watch the Oklahoma State game this week, Hubbard ran for 300 yards. Have you had a chance to look at your film and see what you guys did to stop him? Is that a boost going forward?

I didn’t watch a snap of it, probably won’t until we play Kansas State, but I did hear about the night he had, 296 yards, something like that.

I think it gives everybody in the organization some confidence knowing that we held such a powerful rushing attack, and obviously not just the attack but the running back himself, we got a ton of respect for them, and to hold him to 3.3 yards per carry. It kind of makes us all pretty staunch believers in our run defense.

Talk about playing to your own standard and going on the road this week, coming off the bye week.

Yeah, it will be ‚Äì a lot of these young guys it will be the first time they get on an airplane to go to a game. It will be the first time we are in a true ‘hostile’ environment for them, and this venue is a very difficult one to play in. We were there two years ago. At the end of the day these guys have played a lot of football. The field is 120 yards long, 53 1/3 yards wide. When the ball is kicked off, where you’re playing the game is irrelevant, if we choose to make it that way.

To allow an opposing crowd or the fact that you’re on the road affect your play, that’s a choice that you make, and hopefully most of our guys choose opposite of that.

Coach, your thoughts about West Virginia the new look? West Virginia with the new head coach, Neal Brown. And the second part of the question, your quarterback turns 21 today. Have you given Sam any advice about turning 21? What did you do on your 21st birthday?

It was so long ago I can’t remember and maybe that does have a lot to do with what I did that day.

My birthday is in the summer, though, so I had a lot less at stake than Sam does, so I think ‚Äì I’m sure he enjoyed himself this weekend with friends and family, but I haven’t talked to him at all about it. I believe it’s Derek Kerstetter’s birthday, as well, so happy birthday to those two guys.

I’ve got a ton of respect for Coach Brown. The one thing that jumps off the film is they’re playing really, really hard and physical. Schematically, it’s difficult ‚Äì they try to get their athletes on offense in space and create confusion with their stand-up end, No. 33, and what they do in the secondary is a little bit unique, so it will be a good test for both sides of the ball.

Tom, on Saturday should we expect to see Jake and Brandon both back there for punt returns? Coming off mistakes like they made in the Oklahoma State game, do you address them differently since one is a freshman and one is a senior captain?

No, they’re both unique instances when they dropped it. Jake’s was more ‚Äì a lot more fundamentals. He let it get through his hands and his elbows got separated, so it’s just consistency with perfect technique that he’s got to work on and Brandon, it’s my fault. We have harped on him for two years about fielding every punt because it drives you bananas as a head coach when you let punts drop and roll and you lose 20 yards because a guy won’t catch a darn punt.

And we should have reminded him in the game, in that situation, if there is any stress on this, let the punt drop and let it roll, and we will take time off the clock, because the clock is more important at this point than the 10-15 yards that you could save us by being so aggressive. So, he was doing what he thought he was being coached to do, which was, you know, save that field position, but at that moment in the game, we should have done a better job of alerting him of the situation.

You talked about in the past you had problems dealing with prosperity, but you won the Sugar Bowl and now you’re one of the top-ranked teams. How important were the lessons that you learned from last season and a couple seasons ago that have helped?

I think all the lessons that this year’s team learned from last year’s team is good. There are a lot of good things to be taken from last year’s team as well.

I don’t think ‚Äì we’re too young ‚Äì not young age-wise, we’re not far enough along in the development of our program to have any sense of enjoying prosperity. We’ve got to come to work every day to get better, to go 1-0 every snap in practice. It’s unfathomable that anybody at this stage we’re in could feel anything resembling comfortability.

Tom, you mentioned getting developmental guys work. Was there anybody in those situations that stood out or anybody that that group with their progress over the last few weeks that you’re excited about?

I’m going to leave guys out, I’m sure, but I’ve been impressed with the way that David Gbenda runs and hits. Myron Warren has a good future here. Tyler Johnson has improved a ton from this spring. The two young tight ends are going to be really good for us. Kennedy Lewis has had a good couple of weeks, even on the scout team, and I know I’m leaving guys out but those are the ones that jump into my head.

Tom, you said it’s a player’s choice if they let a crowd affect them. Do you think it’s become expected that going on the road it’s tougher? Do you think it’s because the home team gets more juice, so they play better, or it’s just like, we’re going on the road it’s going to be difficult?

Right, yeah, we’re 6-2 in the conference in true road games, so our team has found ways to kind of ‚Äì irrelevant is not the right word, but I think, yeah, home teams usually get a little more excited. There is something to be said about sleeping in the same hotel bed that you sleep in your whole career the night before, and the routine of being at home. That certainly helps.

I feel like our guys do as good of a job as I’ve been around of being able to tune out all of the distraction, whether it be in the routine, the noise of the crowd, anything like that, really focus in on their job.

Tom, with the off-week over, you’re going to push forward with a series of games. What in your mind do you know that this team can do week in and week out and what are you still not sure about?

I know that we can stop the run. I know that our quarterback is as good as there is in the country at managing the game, getting us into good plays and out of bad plays. I would like to see us defend the pass better, whether it be man or in zone, and some consistency in the run game. We have had back-to-back weeks where we felt pretty good about it, so I think we’re headed in the right direction there.

How would you describe Austin Kendall as a quarterback with his strengths? And are you worried about communication issues with no Caden and no Jalen back there?

No, no, those guys ‚Äì I mean, we practice with the music blaring, all that stuff, so I don’t think that will be an issue, the communication part.

Austin Kendall, you can tell ‚Äì I think he’s a fifth-year senior, I know he’s a grad transfer; I wasn’t sure how many years of eligibility he had. He’s very savvy, the ball comes out quick, you know, you can tell he understands the offense. He’s fun to watch. He’s a good player.

I don’t know if frustration is the right word but I sensed something with Keaontay, that you wanted more out of him earlier in the year. I know it’s shifted a little the last couple of weeks. Was it the brace? Something confidence-wise that you needed? What do you think it is with him?

I think the biggest thing we tried to teach him was technically being patient. I thought he was really patient against Oklahoma State behind the line of scrimmage, and it’s the old adage, slow to the hole, fast through the hole, and then the 1-0 mentality. He’s a self-critical guy. It’s a good trait to have, but you’ve got to learn from it and then move on and every now and, again you’re going to go 0-1. The key is don’t go 0-2; don’t let one mistake lead to another one.

Coach Holgorsen and Neal Brown come from air raid influences, but what are the biggest differences between the Will Grier-led team and then the team with Austin Kendall and Coach Brown.

I gotta be honest with you, we’ve played so much football since the last time we played West Virginia that I don’t remember a whole lot about what they did offensively. I know both coaches have made a big commitment to the run game, where some guys from that tree still believe in the short, you know, quick passes as kind of your run game. But other than that, for me to compare the two teams, I have no idea. I can’t remember anything much from last year’s West Virginia team.

Tom, you talked before about the great nose guards you’ve been around in your time as a coach. Not to put Keondre in that group but what kind of impact ‚Äì given the game he played against Oklahoma State, what does that give the defense, and as an opposing play caller what does it do for you when you’ve got a nose that can be disruptive snap after snap?

You go from Ed Oliver to Poona Ford to Chris Nelson; those are three really good players, and now Keondre (Coburn). I don’t know what it does for opposing play callers, but I just ‚Äì I love the way the kid comes to work every day. He’s got two speeds, full and off.

When he’s on the practice field or game field it’s ‘full,’ and I think his demeanor and his likeability ‚Äì I told him the other day that if he takes care of his business off the field, because of his work ethic, his level of play and his demeanor, I could certainly see a scenario where that guy would be a captain before he left here, and that’s always good. The previous two years our nose guard has been a captain. It’s nice to have some leadership up there.

Coach, I know with the schedule being in the segmented situation, did you wait until this week to do any installation at all of what’s going on the rest of the year and hold off some stuff for the rest of the year?

No, no. We’ve tweaked things, things that we are good at, we find new and creative ways to do those, things that we’re not good at, found ways to not do those things, but all schemes that we have had in since training camp.