October 05, 2004
Here are selected questions and answers from head coach Dennis Franchione's weekly media luncheon at the Bright Football Complex:
THE QUESTION: Why don't we start with winning on the road and the fact that Reggie unprompted brought it up on his own after the game so I think that's probably something you pointed out to them.
COACH FRANCHIONE: Yeah. Clear back to our first team meeting in August I talked about necessity of being able to go on the road and win if we want to reach our goals. One of the things I mentioned in the locker room Saturday night after the game was that we go on the road for two weeks here and it's important we prepare well and have a good week of practice because we need to win on the road. We have not done that. It's hard to win on the road in these conferences -- the Big 12, the SEC. Been through this enough times and there's one key ingredient to take with you when you go on the road and that's a good team. But there are a bunch of other key ingredients, too: maturity, leadership, and being a strong team or strong organization as a team and we're much more prepared to go do that than we've ever been. Are we prepared enough to go accomplish it remains to be seen.
THE QUESTION: Those answers were a bunch of things that sound like a description of your quarterback (Reggie McNeal). He's more mature, more of a leader. Is that an ingredient you have to bring with you on the road?
COACH FRANCHIONE: Very much so. When I say it helps to take a good team (on the road), I think it starts with your quarterback offensively because he's going to have to handle crowd noise. He's going to have to handle a lot of situations much different than Kyle Field and him being calm, cool and collected and in command of what he's doing is going to permeate to the rest of the team.
THE QUESTION: How good has (McNeal) become just almost halfway through the season just in terms of maturity and leadership? I'm not talking about on the field. It's pretty clear how good he's out there. I'm talking about the whole package as a quarterback.
COACH FRANCHIONE: He's become pretty good. The last three weeks especially - not that the Utah game wasn't but I think the last three in particular his focus, intensity and preparation have by far been the best I've ever seen. It's been really good of all the quarterbacks I've coached. He's probably been right up there with the best of them. Reggie is really a very intelligent young man and his knowledge of the offense and what a defense is trying to do against him is really pretty good. It was really good last year for a first year guy but it's really good this year now having gone full cycle. It just shows in his judgments out there, his thinking, his ability to react to different situations. You know, just sometimes escaping the blitz or escaping a guy coming loose on a play action pass. I give you great example: the ball he throws to Terrence Murphy on the sideline Saturday night. The end kind of came loose and he started to try to juke him and make him miss and the guy did a good job. He stopped in his tracks and knows where Terrence is; sees him and makes a good throw. That's not a sign after quarter back with any inexperience or immaturity. That's a sign after guy who knows where his players are and knows where he can put the ball and not jeopardize his chances of turning it over.
THE QUESTION: If you could - think back to August. Truthfully, would you have expected to be 3-1 when you looked at what you were facing?
COACH FRANCHIONE: In all honesty, no, I didn't know if we could be 3-1. I'm not saying I didn't think we could, but you know if I was going to have to make some thoughts - you prepare for 3-1, 1-3, whatever could happen, as a coach; but realistically you're probably thinking if we could get through these first four 2-2 and then get into October you feel pretty good about where you were at considering who we're going to play in the opening four games. Going into the preseason, three out of the four were ranked in the top 20. I don't want to sound like I'm underselling our football team. I believe they can accomplish a lot. I just didn't know if we would be ready to accomplish this much this soon.
THE QUESTION: You may have noticed that some expectations kind of gone up now with that 3-1. Do your team's expectations go up as well?
COACH FRANCHIONE: Well, I think our players have high expectations of themselves. You know, I believe they think they can win every game they have left on their schedule - you want them to feel that way. It's my job to make sure we just stay focused on the next one and really they seem to be doing a very good job of that. You know, all we've done is win three games right now. I told the guys on Sunday. We can win any one of the rest of them and we can lose any one of the rest of them. 3-8 is not out of the realm of possibility and 10-1 is not out of the realm of possibility. And probably the fact be known, we'll come somewhere in between. But you've got to respect what you've accomplished but also respect where you're trying to go.
THE QUESTION: Did you think this (redshirt freshman class) when it signed could have as quick of a impact as it had?
COACH FRANCHIONE: Well, no, I don't think you can be new and sense that. I mean, I didn't know what I had. I probably knew more about the incoming class than what I had here on campus. Knew a little bit about a few of the players here but I didn't know a great deal about the team. I felt like it was going to be a good class, but I never felt for a moment this was going to be a class that would make this kind of impact this soon - not at that point in time. Now, last year at this point in time I knew this class was going to make a impact. Again, I don't know if I knew it was going to be this soon.
THE QUESTION: Japhus Brown's interception -- is that something you worked on all week and worked it to perfection and take me through that what went into that more or less baiting the KSU quarterback.
COACH FRANCHIONE: It was really great chess game that went on Saturday night. We corner blitzed and caused them a problem. They corner blitzed and threw the hitch. We corner blitzed, they tried to throw the hitch again, Japhus baited him and intercepted it. They come back and we corner blitz again and they were in the hitch and go and we break it up. So it was kind of a reflection of the entire game. There were two coaching staffs -- one would do something and the other would adjust and the other would adjust. Looking back on the game, in the kicking game I saw that happen many times. In the sequence of events that led to Japhus' interception - we got the best out of that one I guess. I think they scored on that same exact sequence (later in the game).
THE QUESTION: It seems like everyone's giving (Japhus Brown) a hard time about getting caught by the quarterback...
COACH FRANCHIONE: Well, all of us have taken our shot, that's for sure. That's one of those things he's got to live with.
THE QUESTION: So what sense did you get from Japhus from when you visited him during recruiting? I would imagine it was memorable.
COACH FRANCHIONE: It was memorable. Japhus was a fun visit. One of my former players was an assistant coach there and I got to see him and Japhus was a neat young man to talk to. I liked his personality. I liked his attitude. He wasn't overconfident but he was confident. He was grateful, he was excited. He had the type of persona I like to have on our team. And he's still pretty jovial guy if you noticed. Haven't figured out his comment from after the game completely...
THE QUESTION: Fran, when you first got A&M you heard about the reputation of Kyle Field and it didn't materialize last year really because the games were not that great of games. But now that you've gone through two or three of these here has it lived up to what you hoped and maybe surpassed it?
COACH FRANCHIONE: It has been great. Really has. You're right. I don't think last year we did our part to get Kyle Field where it needed to be. Every time they start to build and get there, we'd deflate them somehow and I think we recognize as players and coaches it's our responsibility to get them going, first. But the last two home games have been really awesome. I mean, for us to be able to force a team to use three timeouts and have 13 minutes to go in the second quarter is pretty tough feat to accomplish and I really merit the crowd for that. It seemed like they would be loud and as soon as they sensed the quarterback starting to change the play, they got louder. I didn't really know that they could get louder. It was great. In fact when we handed out our awards on Sunday, we gave a MTXE (Mental Toughness eXtra Effort) award to the crowd to point out the importance what they meant to the victory.
THE QUESTION: Are you looking to when there's 82,000 at Kyle like it's going to be like in November probably.
COACH FRANCHIONE: You bet. I'm always looking to see this place rocking like that.
THE QUESTION: Were you surprised at how sophisticated of fans they were. They dropped the decibel level down when you guys had the ball...
COACH FRANCHIONE: They needed to take a break. I mean, they're loud so much of the time. I don't know notice this during the game but when you watch the TBS copy, which I did later that night, you constantly hear the crowd and then when they need to they get louder and it doesn't seem like to me in a lot of games you hear that. And they are a knowledgable crowd because when the other team has the ball that's when they're the loudest. Our defensive players know that puts pressure on them because the offense is calling signals we've got to do our communication, too; but it's a good problem to have. It's the kind that you want to have.
THE QUESTION: How about Lee Foliaki? Depending on the injury situation may get a chance to step up even more.
COACH FRANCHIONE: Lee fits well. I love his personality. We knew Lee somewhat - didn't know him well but we knew about him coming out of high school over at TCU. You just know when you sit down with Lee that he's a line backer. He's just got that personality and that wittiness about him and the way he thinks. He's just got a real fun-loving side to him that you enjoy. And you enjoy talking to him. You can kid with him. You enjoy recruiting a guy like Lee.
THE QUESTION: Because your last road game was at Utah, are you looking forward to going back on the road and seeing how much this team has grown since that last road game.
COACH FRANCHIONE: I'd rather play all of them at home, but they don't give me that choice. I think you're right. This will continue to tell us about this team and where we're trying to get to and where we are. It'll certainly be a gauge of all the team building activities we've done and the maturity we've talked about and leadership we've talked about. If we don't win the game that doesn't necessarily mean that those areas are not in place. I mean, we're going to face a much improved ball club from last year and a pretty solid defensive ball club. You go on the road for homecoming. I'm sure back in the winter when they looked at this game they wrote it down in the win column probably, that's why we've got to be the homecoming opponent. I understand that. I've been there before. But it'll be a gauge.
THE QUESTION: Are you using that homecoming angle to fire up the team?
COACH FRANCHIONE: I wouldn't do anything like that.