October 19, 2004
Audio from Tuesday's football media luncheon is available through the links to the right. Files can be downloaded and are in MP3 format.
Selected quotes from Coach Dennis Franchione's press conference on Tuesday at the Bright Football Complex are posted below.
Have any of your goals changed?
"No. When we put our goals together at the beginning of the year we set very high goals. We have a pyramid of them and there's almost always something that you're trying to attain. At the top of our pyramid is the national championship and at the bottom is coming together as a team. I just believe that you only can attain what you've set as a goal. It's hard to attain something you don't have. You need to have a vision for where you want to go otherwise you're just like a ship out in the ocean without a rudder; you're just going to float around. We identified ours pretty well."
You talked last week about coloring in the blocks on your goal pyramid. Did you color in anything this week?
"We did. We colored in the second level of our pyramid."
What's that?
"The heading on it is play smart and play together. It deals with far more tangible items such as effort; being the least penalized; which we haven't been very good at and I made them vow to work harder to improve if I was going to color this in, play physical - physical Aggie football. It's more football-related areas that we can identify and then I know I'm going to be talking about focus, intensity, aggressiveness, things like that I know I'm going to be talking about with the team. Usually I take about a month to two and a half months after spring practice and just kind of let this digest on my mind about how I'm going to handle this team. This year it just happened a little earlier because the movie "Miracle" kind of played right into our whole plan. What I put on those blocks of the pyramid change each year to a certain degree based on where we're at as a program and where we're trying to go and what we need to do to get there."
After the Utah game, did you sense that what you were going to tell the team after the game would be important to which direction your team went this season?
"What assists you in that I think is that this team had already laid such a foundation of coming together as a team and playing for each other and the - the relationship of coach and player trust and player and player trust was strong enough that it was much easier to deal with that game on Sunday and Monday than it probably would have ever been last year. We've been together and players learn to trust us and we've learned to trust them on a lot of things, too. They've learned to trust each other in the feel and accountability of each other. When we come back and start saying we're better than this and it was really fairly easy. We had done our work ahead of time. People ask if I'm a positive person or negative person. I'm not a negative person but I'm a realist in that I know I may have to deal with this or all the way to this with this football team. When the Utah situation happened it wasn't like I hadn't thought about it. When I go in the locker room after a game I have four speeches ready for our team. So I know based on how the game has gone what I want to say. For the most part, before we ever get to the end of the game. You obviously change it and take what's happened and mold it a little bit."
Since you're a realist would you talk about how far this team has come and how quickly they've done it.
"I would never want to say I didn't believe these players couldn't achieve this because that's not true. I couldn't have said that I thought the likelihood of it was real strong. But I wasn't going to doubt them. I was going to believe in them. So am I surprised a little bit of where we are? You have to be. If you think back to July and August when we talked and you're thinking we've got three of the first four games against preseason top 20 teams and then two road games. It was hard. coming off a 4-8 year and knowing how much work we had to do, to think that we could get to this point today. Obviously it wasn't impossible."
What were some of the things you saw during the off season - spring practice and everything that made you feel there was this foundation laid you definitely didn't have last year.
"Well, first off, it's the way the players came back in January. They came back with an attitude that they didn't want to go through that again. They had more purpose to everything. We had been full cycle so they knew what was coming next. They understood the importance of getting stronger, why they needed to get stronger. When we went to see the movie "Miracle" that helped get my message across about team and it gave us an early rallying cry of 'Who do you play for?' As we continued through the off season and the off season program and spring practice you could just see them coming together and seeing the elements of putting the team first and themselves secondary. (You could see it) in the way they handled themselves, the way they talked, the way they started to have compassion about how their teammate was doing rather than themselves. Then you go into summer workouts and my first summer it was like 'Gosh we've never worked this hard before' and this summer it was 'This is what we do. This is what we need to do to get to where we are' and our August two a days were a reflection of that because you know everybody kind of put a lot of personal issues out of their mind and focused on getting better and getting better as a team and - just been a lot of comments and body language that leads you to know you're start to go put those pieces together."
What do you remember of the week leading into the Clemson game?
"Our players believed they could beat Clemson. The Wyoming game was such a validation of all of our thoughts. I didn't know how good we were but we all knew we were better than the Utah game and the 31-0 Wyoming game was just a reassurance of 'we are better.' The Clemson game - our players believed they could play with Clemson. They knew they would have to play well and have to execute and play hard and play well on defense. You know, I was still at a point in time where I didn't know what to believe. You're afraid to let yourself believe too many good things and certainly don't want to remember too many of those bad things that are still out there."
When you hired Les Koenning at TCU what about him made him the right choice?
"No. 1, Les was opposite of me and I didn't want somebody that was like me. I wanted to offset my strengths, and hopefully I have some, with that person's strengths. He had some real strengths in the passing game and he had strengths as a coach from the state of Texas as far as knowing a lot of people. He'd been in the NFL. I knew he was going to bring a lot as far as identity in the State of Texas with his dad being a high school coach with his knowledge and his background. His strengths being the opposite of what my strengths, so we could mesh it together and make everything stronger."
Can you breakdown the offensive game planning and how that works in regard to Coach Koenning?
"Les and I probably spend more time together than any coach and unfortunately I'm the head coach and he's the offensive coordinator so he has to put up with me fussing at him sometimes. But we have a good relationship. We have one where he can speak our mind and get better. Les has lots of great ideas and every coach in that room has input into the game plan. As we go through formations down and distance things everybody has thoughts and we search for the best thought. In some ways I'm kind of the quality control guy. I don't let us do too many things. I don't let us put in stuff that maybe I don't think we're quite ready for or I'll let us go a little over the edge in some areas maybe, but I'm the quality control person I think in that room for the most part. Amazingly during a game I think Les and I counterbalance each other pretty well. I may be thinking one thing and he's thinking another and a lot of times he gets into a great rhythm with his play calls and sometimes I do and sometimes we're both sitting there saying we don't have a clue. Neither one of us had any rhythm in the fourth quarter of the K-State game because we didn't have the ball enough, so where do we go? We both started bouncing ideas off of each either and fortunately we found one that worked pretty good."
Did you have to be talked into starting five wide receivers with no backs against OSU?
"No. I challenge our guys in the staff room and if they've done their homework -- I call it 'checking their hole card.' If they meet my challenge and they've dotted the i's and crossed the t's and are prepared to sell me on it, I give them no problem whatsoever because I know they'll coach it well. I know they believe in it and I know the players will sense those things and so when I say I'm quality control that's a little bit what I do. So when we opened up with five wide receivers in the game that was what we felt like as a staff was the best thing to do and I certainly had been a part of the decision but I don't necessarily think it was my idea."
When you say counter balance, do you mean that Coach Koenning is more five wides and you're more two tight ends and two backs?
"The way I would have looked at it in 1999 when Les joined our staff, I had an option background maybe a little stronger than he did and he had a passing background a little stronger than I did and we meshed them together. We don't run a lot of option anymore.We have gotten away from it a little bit, although we still have some elements of it in our offense. His strengths in the passing game are really good and I can kind of take us in the other direction and keep everything meshed together."
Does that or should that send a message that you're willing to throw the ball 55 yards down field with a few seconds left on the clock instead of taking a knee and running the clock down?
"We're going to try to score anyway we can anytime we can. I hope it does. The other part of that is that I believe in Reggie (McNeal) right now so much. When you have a quarterback that you can go out on the edge a little bit more of risk but know that he's going to understand and keep you out of a problem then as a coach it lets you shoot from the hip a little bit more. It's not uncalculated, I don't mean that. It means if we want to call four verticals 10 times in a game like we did against Iowa state, we know Reggie's going to take care of it."
How happy are you with the defense and its ability to produce turnovers?
"That's been a major key. It's just been really pleasing to see our defense grow together especially in light of what they went through in the Utah game. To see the young players coming in with their enthusiasm getting a little better every week and then to see some of the older players getting better. I didn't know if it would happen this soon."
Have you ever seen anything like what y'all are doing right now as far as turnovers on offense?
"No. One turnover in six games - I don't know if I've heard that have from any other team let alone one of my teams. I can't remember that. You know, Geoff mentioned that destiny the other night. I'd like to think that it's happened as a result of the hard work we've put in on emphasizing turnovers and take aways. Not only did Taylor (Schuster) recover it, he had both hands on it as he lumbered down the field. You know that they've accepted this coaching. This is an important part for us to turn our record around."
Fran last year you said you were glad to be at A&M, but what's it like being at A&M right now?
"You coach for lots of reasons. But the biggest enjoyment of this year has been getting to go to the lockerroom after the game and see our players and see their chemistry in there and their confidence grow and self esteem grow and them grow together. The locker room after the Clemson game was just unbelievable and then the K-State game was even better and Oklahoma State game was neat. So those are memories you want to keep as a coach because it's really what you do this for. As far as really enjoying it obviously winning is more enjoyable than losing but as coaches I always say you dwell on the losses too long. You don't have enough time to savor the victories so you get wrapped up in the now with the next game. I watched Bill Parcells get interviewed by 60 Minutes a few weeks ago and his ex-wife said he was never happy even if he won the game and he explained that people don't understand that within an hour after the game you got this guy's injured what are you going to do here you got this problem to deal with you got this problem to deal with. As a coach, you immediately move ahead so fast with what's the next challenge you don't have enough time to completely enjoy it but I'm glad we're a part of it."
Aldo De La Garza said he was scared to death at the prospect of starting two redshirt freshmen on the offensive line. Were you scared how those guys would react?
"Well, I think that would be a wrong use of words for me. I watch practice every day and I had reason to believe they would have success. You always know that a young man playing in his first college football game might have some ups and downs so you probably a little anxiety or concern about that. But you made your decision to put them in that position based upon watching practice every day and watching a tape of practice every night so you have a level of comfort that they're going to perform reasonably well."