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Rice University Athletics
Rice Monday Football Press Conference Transcript
9/3/2007 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 3, 2007
Opening Statement
"Everything in this program begins and ends with me. My job is to have a football team ready to play. I thought that we weren't on edge as I thought we would have been. At the start of the game, I thought we were moving the ball well on offense. The first break (weather delay) got us out of that some rhythm. The second break (weather delay) did the same thing. My job in the dressing room is to bring those guys out refocused and ready to go. Defensively, we played the option well. If you look at last year's stats, they (Nicholls State) rushed for more yards against Nebraska than they did against Rice. I was pleased with the defense, but there are still some things that we need to improve on. We also have to make improvements on special teams. It's all technique issues that we need to improve on after watching the film. We have to put these young men in situations to win. I didn't do that. The expectation of this program has to be that we're going to go out and win every football game. Coaches lose games, players win games. It's my job to make that happen and I did a bad job of getting these young men in the situation that they needed to be in. I'm going to improve. This football is going to improve. All of our goals for the season are still in-tact."
On the weather delays
"I thought we were ready to go on offense. One of the tragedies of that football game was that we were in great shape. We're in great football shape. When you get a 50-minute break, a 70-minute break and a halftime break, you don't get a chance to impose your will on an opponent. Everyone was fresh in that entire football game and that's not football. In football, someone is supposed to be worn out in the fourth quarter and someone else is supposed to be whooping their tail.
On Chase and Jarett's Preparation
"As far as Chase (Clement) and Jarett's (Dillard) comments (about being overconfident), I take a lot of fault in that too. I protected those guys so much from my arrival here in the spring. I didn't let Chase or Jarett get hit in camp. I haven't let those two men get hit in practice. There's a fine line between getting them game ready and keeping them healthy."
On Chase Clement
"We're not holding Chase back in any way. We want him to play his ball game. We sure don't want him hurt in practice. He's there to make plays. He's a great quarterback. He'll be over his performance (Saturday) quickly."
On Scott Solomon and Chris Jones
"We're so excited about how those two came in and played. The sad thing is that Bencil (Smith) is injured and done for the season. It was great for a freshman like Chris Jones to come off the bench and play the way he did. He paid attention in practice and was ready to go when needed. I thought Scott had a big-time football game. We caused five fumbles on defense and got two of them back. We need to be more opportunistic when we get the ball out."
On the Offense
"On offense, we didn't have the production we may have wanted. There is still some good news when you look at the film. The good news is that the offensive line opened some excellent holes. The running backs may have missed a couple of cut backs here and there. It's little technical things that we have to improve on. We have to work better on those things in practice. That's on me as a head coach. Those are things that you only learn in games. When it got wet, we had to restrict some things on offense that we wanted to do, but we're going to run a wide-open offense. We will take this film and we're going to be a much-improved football team going forward."
On the Receivers
"They were a couple of routes where Jarett is the guy and Chase doesn't go through a progression. I thought that Chase went through his progressions and reads well. We had some guys drop some balls that normally don't drop balls."
On Baylor
"Baylor going to be ready to play after getting beat by TCU last week. Coach Morriss does an excellent job. They won three Big 12 games last season. They are improving under his leadership and things are going well in Waco. They want to win. When football teams lose and are filled with true competitors, they're angry, going to play edge and we're going to get Baylor's best effort on Saturday."
Closing Statement
"We will get better. The expectation of Rice football is going to be to win. When we don't win, people need to be upset because that's how we're going to improve around here and get things done."
