by Bill Seals
Opening comments:
“From my end, there’s not too much carryover from the Kansas game of what I said afterwards. The biggest thing about watching the video is I appreciate our kids’ resolve in the football game to be able to go and not play our best early, but have the ability to stay within themselves and put together a really good second half to win the football game.
“With that said, we’ve got another huge task at hand with Texas Tech coming in. It’s another really good quarterback and an explosive offense. It’s a really good challenge for our football team and football program. We got back to practice last night and look forward to the opportunity.”
On what’s left to achieve until he can say culture change is complete:
“I still don’t think we’ve played 60 minutes of our best football, and that’s where we want to get to. We want to get to that point where we have the ability to execute and play our best consistently for 60 minutes. I’m realistic and know it’s never going to be perfect, but there’s things we can continue to control and get better at. We need to and have two great opportunities to do that.
“You talk about stringing things together. That hasn’t really happened. Equal time when they’ve won a road game is they’ve won two games in a row. We can build on what the progress is we have made. There’s still a lot of work out there for us and our kids know that. I kind of challenged ourselves a little bit yesterday on where we can go. We’ve got two weeks guaranteed left to get a lot of work done and we look forward to that challenge.”
On David Montgomery moving to first-team running back and if that means he’ll get more action:
“It’s hard to tell. A lot of what David has done is certainly a credit to his process and work ethic. I really appreciate his detail and maturity for a really young player to understand that it’s more than just carrying the football. He’s really worked hard at studying the game on film and being locked in. That’s been a real positive.
“We’ve got really good players at that position and we even said that on Sunday. You get a chance to watch David play, but Mike (Warren) had a couple good runs and is still dinged up. It will be good to get him back healthy. Kene (Nwangwu), it was great for him to catch the football and he had a great run with it and then scores the touchdown. We talked about Mitchell (Harger) on Saturday.
“The thing that is positive is there’s depth and great competition. As much as David is playing really well right now, it will be great to continue to watch that competition unfold. That’s what’s great about practice. You hope that you have quality at all the positions. It’s really competitive and inspiring opportunities for guys to get multiple opportunities once the game starts.”
On if he envisions Montgomery continuing to be the workhorse of the group:
“I think we’re at 20-some carries in the game, and at some point you go with the hot hand there too. He became the hot hand and a couple of those (early) runs that he makes, he’s really tackled two yards in the backfield and has the wherewithal to get out of it and makes a huge 20-some yard gain. It kind of gave us a spark. His tenacity that he was running with on Saturday really led us to say we’ve got to give the guy that’s running well the ball. That doesn’t take a whole lot of coaching genius to do that.”
On what the team did defensively in final three quarters to have so much success:
“We won first down better. You went into the game and a little bit of the predicament with Kansas is you didn’t know what you were going to get. They’ve played a lot of quarterbacks and done a lot of different things. They came out and really sustained some running game, which was a credit to them. They added an extra hat in the running game and their young quarterback really did a nice job getting the ball out into space. We tightened our coverage down a little bit as the game went on and we brought some pressure and was able to get some vertical penetration. The biggest thing is we were able to do a great job on first down and able to get into some third-down situations where we could be successful.”
On what he needs to see out of Warren for him to carve out a bigger role on Saturdays:
“Mike’s biggest thing is getting healthy right now. I’m not worried about that. We all know Mike can run the football and do what he needs to do to be successful. There’s plenty of video tape evidence of that occurring a year ago and some good games this year. He needs to get himself healthy and back into the swing of things. The one thing that I’ve appreciated about Mike the last two or three weeks is he has stayed locked in and stayed great attention to detail. Once he’s back 100 percent, it’s going to be fun to see what that room looks like. We’ve got a lot of guys playing well right now.”
On having senior walk-ons be successful and those kids being in leadership positions:
“It’s interesting because our senior class is a little bit eclectic. It’s not the standard 24 seniors that have been here for four or five years. There’s some transfers, junior college players and you’ve got this really unique group of guys that have stayed the course. You’re talking guys like Josh Jahlas, Mitchell Harger and Nick Fett. These guys that probably could have quit at any time and it would have been easy to quit.
“They’ve been the foundation and rock as this culture has started to really change. Those three guys have played the most consistent, maybe some of the best football of anybody on our football team from game to game. You hope by the time you’re a senior, your seniors understand what the values of your football program look like and attitude, effort, commitment, and they teach that to the juniors, sophomores and freshmen.
“I was fortunate to play in that kind of a program and then fortunate at Toledo to create that kind of program where the kids were teaching the young guys in the program on what the expectation is. When it’s always the coach doing it, it’s hard. They turn the coaches out too, 18-to-22 year old young men. But when it’s coming from your players, that’s really special. To have some guys like we have that have been through a lot, they have persevered to get where they’re at. It’s really rewarding and has been a huge asset to that football program.”
Opening comments:
“From my end, there’s not too much carryover from the Kansas game of what I said afterwards. The biggest thing about watching the video is I appreciate our kids’ resolve in the football game to be able to go and not play our best early, but have the ability to stay within themselves and put together a really good second half to win the football game.
“With that said, we’ve got another huge task at hand with Texas Tech coming in. It’s another really good quarterback and an explosive offense. It’s a really good challenge for our football team and football program. We got back to practice last night and look forward to the opportunity.”
On what’s left to achieve until he can say culture change is complete:
“I still don’t think we’ve played 60 minutes of our best football, and that’s where we want to get to. We want to get to that point where we have the ability to execute and play our best consistently for 60 minutes. I’m realistic and know it’s never going to be perfect, but there’s things we can continue to control and get better at. We need to and have two great opportunities to do that.
“You talk about stringing things together. That hasn’t really happened. Equal time when they’ve won a road game is they’ve won two games in a row. We can build on what the progress is we have made. There’s still a lot of work out there for us and our kids know that. I kind of challenged ourselves a little bit yesterday on where we can go. We’ve got two weeks guaranteed left to get a lot of work done and we look forward to that challenge.”
On David Montgomery moving to first-team running back and if that means he’ll get more action:
“It’s hard to tell. A lot of what David has done is certainly a credit to his process and work ethic. I really appreciate his detail and maturity for a really young player to understand that it’s more than just carrying the football. He’s really worked hard at studying the game on film and being locked in. That’s been a real positive.
“We’ve got really good players at that position and we even said that on Sunday. You get a chance to watch David play, but Mike (Warren) had a couple good runs and is still dinged up. It will be good to get him back healthy. Kene (Nwangwu), it was great for him to catch the football and he had a great run with it and then scores the touchdown. We talked about Mitchell (Harger) on Saturday.
“The thing that is positive is there’s depth and great competition. As much as David is playing really well right now, it will be great to continue to watch that competition unfold. That’s what’s great about practice. You hope that you have quality at all the positions. It’s really competitive and inspiring opportunities for guys to get multiple opportunities once the game starts.”
On if he envisions Montgomery continuing to be the workhorse of the group:
“I think we’re at 20-some carries in the game, and at some point you go with the hot hand there too. He became the hot hand and a couple of those (early) runs that he makes, he’s really tackled two yards in the backfield and has the wherewithal to get out of it and makes a huge 20-some yard gain. It kind of gave us a spark. His tenacity that he was running with on Saturday really led us to say we’ve got to give the guy that’s running well the ball. That doesn’t take a whole lot of coaching genius to do that.”
On what the team did defensively in final three quarters to have so much success:
“We won first down better. You went into the game and a little bit of the predicament with Kansas is you didn’t know what you were going to get. They’ve played a lot of quarterbacks and done a lot of different things. They came out and really sustained some running game, which was a credit to them. They added an extra hat in the running game and their young quarterback really did a nice job getting the ball out into space. We tightened our coverage down a little bit as the game went on and we brought some pressure and was able to get some vertical penetration. The biggest thing is we were able to do a great job on first down and able to get into some third-down situations where we could be successful.”
On what he needs to see out of Warren for him to carve out a bigger role on Saturdays:
“Mike’s biggest thing is getting healthy right now. I’m not worried about that. We all know Mike can run the football and do what he needs to do to be successful. There’s plenty of video tape evidence of that occurring a year ago and some good games this year. He needs to get himself healthy and back into the swing of things. The one thing that I’ve appreciated about Mike the last two or three weeks is he has stayed locked in and stayed great attention to detail. Once he’s back 100 percent, it’s going to be fun to see what that room looks like. We’ve got a lot of guys playing well right now.”
On having senior walk-ons be successful and those kids being in leadership positions:
“It’s interesting because our senior class is a little bit eclectic. It’s not the standard 24 seniors that have been here for four or five years. There’s some transfers, junior college players and you’ve got this really unique group of guys that have stayed the course. You’re talking guys like Josh Jahlas, Mitchell Harger and Nick Fett. These guys that probably could have quit at any time and it would have been easy to quit.
“They’ve been the foundation and rock as this culture has started to really change. Those three guys have played the most consistent, maybe some of the best football of anybody on our football team from game to game. You hope by the time you’re a senior, your seniors understand what the values of your football program look like and attitude, effort, commitment, and they teach that to the juniors, sophomores and freshmen.
“I was fortunate to play in that kind of a program and then fortunate at Toledo to create that kind of program where the kids were teaching the young guys in the program on what the expectation is. When it’s always the coach doing it, it’s hard. They turn the coaches out too, 18-to-22 year old young men. But when it’s coming from your players, that’s really special. To have some guys like we have that have been through a lot, they have persevered to get where they’re at. It’s really rewarding and has been a huge asset to that football program.”
