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Rice University Athletics
Monday Press Conference Transcript
9/17/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 17, 2007
"You know, you hate to lose any football game, but I saw progress on the football team on offense. I saw some progress defensively. Even on special teams and the kickoff coverage their average starting line was the 23 yard line. That's the best we've done this year. Offensively we played a solid first half, the second half offensively we kept having three and outs and turning the ball over. We can't do that. We've got to penalty free football. We've got to play mistake free football, and we're eliminating those mistakes as we go. Even defensively with them having 593 yards 89% of the plays they had 293 yards and on eight plays they get 290 yards. Of those eight, two of them we've got cornerbacks right there who've got to make a play, and we've got to make sure we've got proper alignment and assignment and we use technique, so we are getting better. I thought we played with tremendous passion. I thought we played with a lot of effort, and that's something that's going to win us some ball games as we go on. Special teams, that has to be the edge in football games. As we made progress on kickoff coverage, we still got outplayed in some areas there. I'm excited about this football team. Great programs are built they don't just happen, and we're going to build something great here."
On the second half play calling
"If you look at that, we had a drop on our first three and out by a wide open receiver, we had an interception on a ball that just got away from Chase, we had a fumble. I don't think that was it at all. I think it was just trying to sustain that rhythm that we had in the first half."
On the speed of the game
"We were trying to run an up tempo game. That was one of the things we wanted to do was run a fast no huddle. We can sustain that for as long as we can sustain it. At times we have to slow down and catch our breath also. We're in pretty good shape, but where we are with some of the numbers at some of the positions we don't have some rotation that we would need right now to sustain that tempo for four quarters."
On QB Chase Clement
"Any time he's not performing up to his level it's a concern, but he's a very confident young man who's determined to get better every week too. You just can't put your finger on one thing , but we're talking, he's working hard, and we're going to work through it. "We've got to get him to slow down at times and that's us. We've got to get him in good situations."
On the young defensive line
"I thought they played pretty well. Cheta had an outstanding game, Scott Solomon's been starting all along, Cameron Thompson had some nice plays in there. They all have production, and they're guys we need in this program. They're playing because they've been called upon. We took the red shirt off of Cameron last week and I thought he raised up to the challenge."
On creating and avoiding turnovers
"We lost the turnover battle again. We had three, they had two. We've had a lot of opportunities for turnovers. We just haven't capitalized on them. We dropped another one in the Texas Tech game, we dropped six in the Baylor game. When we've got those opportunities presented to us we've got to take advantage of them. Sometimes you read about PBU's and that's not what you want. Those should be interceptions. "That's something we work on every day. That's something we emphasize every day in practice with ball security drills and take away drills and turnover drills and we'll continue to do that."
On the pressure against Texas Tech
"I think our defensive line as far as watching all the film on Tech they got more pressure than anybody has to date with a four man rush. We used 15 pressures Saturday night. Seven were zero and eight were zone voids, and we were still doing better with just four men than when we tried to blitz them."
On this week's game vs. Texas
"You turn the video on of Texas vs. UCF and the first thing that jumps out at you about Texas is how fast they are and how big they are, but you see UCF go toe to toe with them and stay in the ball game. That gives you a lot of hope. "These young men know what they're capable of. They know we have to get better and they will use that, but every year is a new season. We've just got to worry about getting this football team better every week and that's what we're doing."
