Rice University Athletics
Monday Press Conference Transcript
11/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Nov. 26, 2007
Opening Statement
"It was a crazy year with all those records Chase set and the ones Jarett set, but they'd give them all up for some wins. If you talked to those kids after the game, they'd give all those records up for a winning season. It shows you how it's truly a team sport. You can't just play great offense. You've got to play defense. You've got to play special teams. That's something that we're going to have to improve on immediately. We were already working this morning towards next season with some personnel moves and different things before we hit the road recruiting. "What an unbelievable, gutsy performance by Chase to get us 700 total yards of offense and some how you come out of here without a win. We have an offensive conference. We ended up scoring 38.5 (points per game) but we gave up over 40 (points per game) defensively, and it just doesn't work that way. When we call different plays at different situations in the game, we've got to execute be it offensively, defensively, or on special teams. At times I think we really struggled doing that. You look defensively where we would stop them, stop them, stop them, then give up the big play. A one yard run then a two yard run then a 39 yard run with an unblocked guy. We've got to get where our alignments and assignments are sound. We've had the same issues from game one to game 12. That's a concern. We do have to improve defensively. We've got to go out also at special teams and get upgraded there. We're going to continue to expect wins, keep the standards high. I've said it before. As long as you keep the expectations high, we're going to achieve what's expected. We're going to expect to win around here. We expect bowl games. "There are a lot of great things about the season but I'm very frustrated with the final record because we were so close. We have to execute at times to win ball games when we didn't do it. We're going to continue to work hard to give the Rice Owls the type of program they deserve to have."
on coaching D-1A
"It's a little different. You can go back to Texas State, Hal Mumme was at Southeast and we beat him there. The X's and O's aren't different at all. Football is football. It's about blocking and tackling and getting aligned right. It may have been my first time as a head coach but it was the same at TCU and New Mexico. You've got to play fanatical football, you've got to be aligned right, and sometimes you have to risk to be great."
on the team
"I'm more convinced now, today, that we can go to the Liberty Bowl than the day I got here. Because of what Rice has to offer people for a lifetime. It's not about four or five years. I've said this before too, all great things are built they just don't happen, and we're in the process of building something great. I have tremendous confidence in myself, this staff, the university, these players. Great things are happening around here every day. We're getting better every day."
on the high scoring offenses
"The biggest difference right now is the quarterback being such a running back and everybody running the option from the gun and still having everybody spread out. It'll be just like the run and shoot. When that first hit it gave everybody such problems then people learned how to distribute the field correctly. From today on even though recruiting is going on, Chuck Driesbach isn't going on the road. He's out studying. We're getting film in from other universities that run similar defenses and we'll try to have all the alignment errors corrected."
on looking back at the plan for the season
"I take full responsibility for everything that happens here, but we didn't have a contingency plan for when we ran out of players. I was very proud of the fact that we moved James Casey from a starting defensive end at the end of spring to quarterback first and then to receiver because as he developed and the other receivers developed, that's really what let JD out. Even the other night when they tried to double him or play man on him and zone over the top that's when James Casey or Toren Dixon or other people started making plays. I think we had some key personnel moves that helped us this year. It's different and you have to learn at Rice that when you hit a Memphis game, a lot of squads in the country have 120 and we have 90. When you run out of all your linebackers and you're rolling safeties, I don't think anybody in America can plan for some things. I think at times this coaching staff did as fine a job as anyone in the country at dealing with those issues."
on playing 15 true freshmen
"It's going to end up being a positive. We would have loved to have redshirted every freshman in this program. The amazing thing though is Scott Solomon by the end of two a days was a legitimate starter because he was the best, so as much as we wanted to redshirt them they were still athletically some very gifted young men who would have eventually played their way into the line up anyway. Some of the injuries just forced us to pull the redshirts earlier which is probably a positive thing. It made us grin and bear some issues this year, but I think those great defensive players have almost got to be like a factory worker where every situation they've get in, they've been in before so they know how to react. At times with the youth this year we didn't know how to do that."
on redshirting offensive linemen
"That's going to be huge for us down the road. Every offensive linemen we had redshirted. There's an amazing thing about a fifth year player in college football. That extra year is when a lot of guys make all-conference and make all-American and become captain of the team. It's the fifth year redshirt guys that have a huge senior rush. They're bigger, faster, stronger and have been in the same program for five years. Doing the same things over and over you get very skilled at what you're doing. So I was pleased that we got to redshirt Hotard and Brian Stacey. There's still some guys who were able to retain their redshirts, and that's going to help us too. Playing 15 true freshmen this year will help us in the future."
on recruiting targets
"We're going to go out and find some corners. As good a job as Gary Anderson did this year, he was 6'1". We've got to find some bigger, taller corners. When you're trying to guard that guy at Memphis who is 6'8" and your corners, one of them is 6'1" the other is about 5'8". We've got to be able to upgrade at corner. We've got to find some interior defensive linemen. We had a good recruiting class last year on the defensive line. We need to follow up with another class especially the bigger guys, tackles and noses. We'd like to have an end. The receivers that got hurt changed some of our recruiting needs. Novak will get medicaled. He'll never play again, so we're going to end up taking two receivers. We'd like to really increase our speed at that position. With the injury to Tyler Smith, initially we weren't going to take a running back this year, we're going to take a running back now. Running back is a unique position. A lot of times those guys are recruited not developed, and we need to get one that can come in and make you get the extra point team ready."
on recruiting so far
"Recruiting is going great. We've got eight solid commitments right now by people that are going to help get us to our goals. There's a lot of excitement right now. We didn't achieve what we wanted to in wins and losses, but there's a lot of young men out there that want Rice. By the end of this recruiting class you'll see we've put together one of the best ones that's been here in a lot of time. The commitments we have now when you walk in the home they know they're going to get an opportunity to play, they know they're going to get an opportunity to get a big time degree. They're excited about it."
on discussing playing time with prospects
"You're honest with them all. You tell them that as a general rule I'll try to redshirt everybody. That's what you want to do. We started this year with 14 scholarships. Tragically some of these young men are getting medicaled, and we're grow those numbers which you really don't want. You need to have it where you have big numbers of classes coming through each year where you don't have a class of 14 or a class of 13. That's where you try to redshirt people looking to the future a little bit to get your classes laid out right to where there's not any big number swings in the program."
on recruiting in Houston
"Most of our commitments right now are out of this area. If you look at our baseball coach, if you look at what Wayne Graham does driving around 610. He doesn't go very far. Every now and then he will. Everybody in America flies into Houston. One of the things we have done is every football coach on this staff has high schools in Houston. We're going to make sure we take care of Houston first before we go anywhere else. That's going to help us build the program, it's going to help us in attendance, it's going to help us win ballgames. These guys are well coached in Houston, and they can come right in and play."
on junior college recruiting
"We've contacted every junior college from coast to coast, but we're looking for the young men with the 1100 SAT. Most guys go to junior college because they have academic trouble, but we've got five guys right now we're looking at out of California."
on the plan for the off-season
"This week I'm doing exit interviews. Right now every assistant coach is doing exit interviews with their position group. I will have an exit interview with everybody on this football team. Every fifteen minutes I'm going to sit down with a new player. We're going to go over what our goals are and what our expectations are, what we need to improve on and what we were good at, where they're sitting academically. It's going to be a very comprehensive exit interview. We're going to let them know we're going to work right now on next year. When they come back after finals, they better do well on finals, and when they come back in January they're going to be ready to go to work. "Chuck Driesbach and Tom Herman will stay in to do the quality control during recruiting to make sure they get all eyes on tape, then I'll get eyes on who we're going to offer. So you won't see any coaches but three of us around here until signing date. The next week I'll go out on the road. We've got our spring dates picked. We've got our calendars ready for all the way up to two a days next year."
