Utah State Aggies College Football Pregame Quote, 10/21/2019

On the Nevada game:

As always, it’s great to win. The guys played hard and handled the late kickoff very well. The defense did some really good things. We knew we had to control the run game and try to get the quarterback off his mark. We were successful in those areas, which was great to see. The defense ran to the ball and played good team defense. Offensively, we had our opportunities early and didn’t take advantage of them in a few spots. We had a couple of balls that were dropped. We just need to find a way to get our mojo a little bit early and make some plays, and get off the field on defense like we did. Then, we need to continually find ways to have more extended drives offensively. That’s a big part of this season moving forward on offense.

We had too many drives that were less than two minutes ‚Äì 15 or 17 of the last drives were less than two minutes. That can’t take place again, especially against the opponent that we’re playing this week. If that takes place, you won’t win. That’s the bottom line. There is pride in the work we have to get done. We know where we’re at. We’re all looking at it as coaches and players. Special teams, obviously, was a huge part of the game again, especially field goal kicking and kickoff return. Savon (Scarver) is awesome. I also commend the other guys that are on that team. They’re very prideful in what they’re doing, and we have a special young man that returns the kicks when he gets the opportunity.

On playing Air Force this week:

It’s a huge challenge this week. Air Force is not a good team, but a great team in all areas: offense, defense and special teams. Their offense is firing on all cylinders and their defense is very opportunistic. They run to the ball and play the way they’ve played for a number of years. They have a lot of really good players and a heck of a scheme, which we all know. We have our work cut out for us, but it’s a great opportunity. The bottom line is this has been built up now and the guys on both teams have made this a big game. So, congratulations to the teams on both sides. It’s a big football game and that’s why you play, is to get into big moments and big games. We’ll see what takes place. But, again, I commend the guys on both sides for putting themselves in this position. It’s our job as coaches to do all we can to get them ready for a big-time football game.

On the competition at the punter position between junior Christopher Bartolic and freshman Pierce Callister:

It was Chris’ time, and he did a nice job last week. Pierce has done some good things, which we know also. It goes back and forth a little bit. With coach (Stacy) Collins, they both have opportunities to kick during the week, and coach Collins felt it was Chris’ opportunity this past week, and he took advantage of it, which was good to see.

On if there are first-team players playing on the kickoff return unit:

It’s a good mix, but there is a lot of experience. I couldn’t really tell you the number of seniors, but there is a good mix of upperclassmen and new guys filtered in there. We put as good of players as we can on special teams. When you have a weapon like Savon, you want to make sure you do all you can. Hale (Motu’apuaka) is there as a defensive tackle playing in the back end, and he has made a couple of great blocks. Christian (LaValle) is in there as a true freshman and has done some great things on those kickoff returns. So, it’s a good mix of young and old, which is pretty much our makeup of the whole football team in all three phases.

On the secondary’s performance against Nevada:

It’s great for those guys. That group is a bunch of workers, they are tough-minded and very talented young men that are great athletes, or they wouldn’t be in the position that they’re in playing Division I football. What carries them through is their ability to fight through the good, fight through the bad, and just keep grinding. They do that in practice. They did it all summer and did it all of spring football. They did it last January when they were conditioning. The ones that are back next year will continue to do that. The great thing is a couple of those young men are obviously leaving, but DJ (Williams) and (Cameron Haney) just give a great work ethic, toughness and understand that every day is not going to be great and that should be infectious for that young group of defensive backs, whether they’re corners or safeties, or quite frankly all the young guys on the team. It’s fun to see them have the success and make the plays that they were making out there. They’ll continue to grow and develop. They have another challenge on their hands this week with, obviously, a team they have to be highly involved with on the run game and they have to also be involved with an Air Force team that is very effective in throwing the football.

On the importance of playing assignment football against Air Force:

Assignment football, physicality, toughness, staying in the moment and understanding what’s coming your way from a very different type of scheme, but functionally, a good scheme that is a great scheme because of players and the way their coaches adjust on game day. All those things combined in this game deal with the discipline of the physical discipline and the mental discipline that has to take place on defense to be able to have any chance of success. There are a lot of different ways a lot of people play these guys ‚Äì a lot of different ways and a lot of different scenarios. They see the odd front, they see the even front and they see people try to blitz them off edges. They see a lot of different scenarios, but the bottom line is they adjust. And, you’ll see that. The first quarter is a good quarter in scoring. Every scoring quarter is a good quarter for Air Force this year. But, their second quarter, just look at it, the adjustments that they make, it’s 100-and-some-odd points this year if I remember right from glancing through that and looking through some things. That’s the guys taking coaching and making adjustments. That’s a big part of it, and then adjusting to the game plan and putting it out there on the field. The coaches have done a good job of it. I’ve been against these guys for many days in my career as a position coach, as a coordinator and now as a head coach. Nothing has changed as far as the respect I have for the guys in the program whether it’s Fisher DeBerry or coach (Troy) Calhoun and his staff. They do a really good job. They’re at their best when they have really good players, and that’s what they have this year. They are really good players.

On if there’s difference from this Air Force team compared to other Air Force teams he’s faced:

It’s funny because I’ve heard it three or four times in the last week: ‘You’re playing Air Force. How is a team that just runs three or four plays so successful?’ That couldn’t be any further from the truth. There are a whole bunch of plays in there. It looks like it’s a dive and you tackle the dive guy, or slow play the quarterback and tackle the quarterback, and then just go tackle the pitch guy and then there are a couple of passes sprinkled in there. It’s far more than that. It’s very in-depth. It’s an elite offense taught by elite coaches. Their ability to adjust. There are a number of plays in there. What appears to be the triple option, many times is not the triple option. The blocking scheme is completely different up front. It may be a trap that the normal eye won’t catch. It may be a zone play. It may be a dive play. It may be a cutoff on the away zone on the backside where they’re running the triple option phase of it, but they’re going to hand the ball off. There are a number of different ways that they attack you.

The biggest way is when they find a deficiency, which a lot of offensive teams will not do. If they find a deficiency, they’ll go back to it, and they’ll go back to and they’ll go back to it. If they can do it 20 times in a row and you can’t adjust to it and deal with it, then you’re going to get pounded and you’re going to get pounded into to the dirt. That’s where they love to live. Again, we have a ton of respect for Air Force. You have to have on your big boy pants and hop in the trenches and battle those guys. That’s why it’s such a great opportunity, because it is unique. That offense is built to grind you down and beat you up. You’ll know if you’re a tough guy at the end of that game if you come out of there and you held your own against that offense, especially inside the tackle box. If you’re weak-minded or soft, you’ll get dominated in that game and you’ll get exposed.

On taking time in camp to work on Air Force:

Camp, spring ball, bye weeks, the day after Christmas. Whenever we find an opportunity to squeeze in a few moments of Air Force, we’ll absolutely do it. You have to in my opinion. That goes back to how many years I’ve played them. I’ve been on both sides of that thing where we’ve played very well and where we have not played very well. I do know this: if you don’t play well in all three phases in this game, you won’t win. You have to play well. You always say that, right? Play well in all three phases: offense, defense, special teams. Sometimes one phase has to pick the other team up to get them over the hump to win the game or even to play well in the game. That may be special teams, offense or defense. That may be two out of the three phases. But, in my opinion, in this football game, you have to play well in all three phases to have an opportunity to win the game. There will be ups-and-downs and flows both ways. These guys will keep on battling. You know the guys from Air Force are going to battle until the end. I know this football team is going to battle to the end. They’re both battle tested. You look at the Navy game, and Air Force came storming back in that game. They were down and they came storming back and took the lead. They didn’t end up winning, but their ability to fight back and keep grinding through the process is what those kids do every single day. Our team has proven to be pretty tough, too. These are a couple tough-minded groups going against each other.

On Air Force not giving up many tackles for loss:

That can’t be forgotten when you talk about Air Force not having a lot of TFLs, is sacks. They have three sacks, so there is three TFLs right there, which is not very many. A lot of times if they have sloppy ball handling, it results in a negative play for them whether that’s a fumble recovery or the ball is rolling on the ground and they miss a pitch. Their ball handling this year has been extraordinary ‚Äì you don’t see the ball on the ground that often. It’s a physical, downhill running attack when they hand the ball off to the fullback. But, a lot of times, that ball is going to the edges. They do a very nice job of just executing the offense. The guys on the edges block very well. The skill set on the offensive side of the football, those wings are fast. That is a little different than you see year-in and year-out with Air Force, is the speed of the wings, the ability of the quarterback to be able to throw the football, and the skill set of both of the wide receivers. One of them is more of a tight end, and the other one is truly a wide receiver. They have the ability to catch the football, and catch contested balls. These guys are running quality routes and quality throws are coming their way, and they catch contested balls. They have a really good offense and a really good defense that is aggressive.

On Air Force using three different quarterbacks to this point in the season:

The skillset may be a little different here or there, but it doesn’t change the scheme. They’re all very well in tune with the scheme and how it attacks different types of defenses on what they’re doing. The one thing you’re not going to do, is you’re not just going to say, ‘Holy cow, we’ve never seen that.’ That’s not going to happen. You have to execute to beat them.

On what it does to a quarterback’s confidence when receivers drop passes:

Jordan (Love) is never going to be one to point any fingers anywhere, that’s not in his DNA, which is part of what makes him so special. I don’t think he does that in his own mind, I don’t think he does it in any way, shape or form. It puts a little bit of a different spin on things, and you don’t want it to hurt your confidence, but if I’m a free throw shooter and I’ve missed the last 10 in a row, all of a sudden that hoop looks really small. We don’t want him to push in any way, shape or form, but his guys need to pick him up. They need to make the great plays. If you look at the Wake Forest game, there were tremendous plays. Siaosi (Mariner)’s play in the end zone pops into my brain. You have to catch contested balls, and you have to be able to make the plays when you have layups. It’s all over on that side. When we’re firing on all cylinders, we’re doing a good job, and guys are making plays. If we’re not doing it, then we need to look at ourselves and self-evaluate ourselves as coaches, self-evaluate ourselves as whatever position we’re playing. Offensive linemen need to give Jordan more time. Let’s work on coaching that better, and being better as a guard, a center and a tackle. If we’re dropping some balls, let’s work on it as coaches and make sure that we’re practicing it the right way to give those kids the opportunity, and give Jordan the opportunity, to have practice feel as much like game time as it possibly can. As long as I’ve done this, I think the most important part of the whole thing is to self-evaluate the good, self-evaluate the average and self-evaluate the bad, and then be consistent and make sure as coaches we’re giving the kids the best opportunity to produce on game day, because they all want to produce on game day.

Not one of them goes out of the tunnel and says, ‘Oh, I hope I play really bad today.’ That doesn’t happen. I think Jordan has played very well. In our last game, he did some really special things with his feet that opened up the run game to allow those big runs to happen. You can watch the tape, and if you can evaluate football for what football is worth in the end and really dissect it and understand how some of those big runs hit, it’s because Jordan Love pulled the ball and got those edge defenders conflicted and they made some poor decisions. Jordan made some really good decisions on when to give it, and when to pull it and run. We missed four huge plays, and we can’t get them back, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t learn from them. If we make those early in that game, it’s potentially a whole different feel, and if we are going to be successful and continue on the road of being successful, that will keep our offense on the field, which needs to happen. It will give Jordan that mojo, ‘Hey, I’m indestructible, I’m going to get this thing done.’ Then, the offense becomes infectious on that. In the spread offense, if your quarterback’s feeling it, and he’s spinning it and making those good decisions, it’s a vicious weapon. That’s what we have. We have a really good quarterback, and we need to do all we can to help him be great.

On the Air Force defense:

Their defense is physical, and their nose guard is 330 pounds. He’s a talented football player. They’re big, they’re strong, and they run in the back end very well. The thing that they do, is if you look at it, they limit snaps. I believe against Fresno State, there was 45-ish total snaps in a football game, and that’s a credit to their defense getting off the field, and that’s a credit to their offense. If they get a lead on you, they’re going to grind you into the ground, and they’re going to let that clock grind away. That’s how they play offense, defense and special teams. When all three of those play in that area, they’re going to have limited snaps on defense, they’re going to have a whole bunch of snaps on offense, and the time of possession is going to be out of control toward their favor. When they play like that, they’re going to win.