Tuesday Football Media Luncheon Quotes and Audio
Sep 06, 2005 | Football
September 06, 2005
Audio from Tuesday's football media luncheon is available through the links to the right. Files can be downloaded and are in MP3 format.
A transcript of Coach Dennis Franchione's press conference on Tuesday at the Bright Football Complex is posted below.
Coach Franchione Media Luncheon Quotes
"Let me just start out by making an announcement.
"Coach Fran Charities is grateful to be able to extend two $3,000 grants...one to the American Red Cross for the children's initiatives for the people at Reed Arena, and the other to the relief fund to help Aggie athletics families who have been directly affected. We feel fortunate we're able to extend ourselves and be able to help people in their time of need.
"I want to say how proud I am to be part of our department, who is extending their welcome to Tulane athletes and to the people who are housed in Reed and helping with the aid. It's great to see that and it's certainly not a surprise to see Aggies do that. Aggies are always first to come in and we're glad that we can make a little bit of difference in that regard."
You said two $3,000 dollar grants?
"It's not a lot, but it'll help."
Richie (Bean) said he's been up late a few times watching (the hurricane) stuff on TV. How is he handling it?
"He's amazing. I talked to him three or four times in the last week or two and, you know, he did not seem worried or distracted by it. You know I don't know how he cannot be. I think probably his mom and dad must have done a great job of not passing it on to him because he certainly did not seem to be, you know, affected by it at practice and in his comments to me and that had to be very difficult."
Talk about kick off coverage and some of his kickoffs. Do you want to improve that and do that better?
"He kicked some deep and non-returnable and we were able to cover much better. He had some height on some. He made one look like a squib kick which we didn't call, but we still covered it pretty well. So I have to feel good about that. About halfway through August camp I saw a little bit of a comfort level come in with Richie, where he felt comfortable with his kicking. He maybe had been pressing a little bit up to that point, and he just backed away and started doing a little more relaxation and I think his results were obvious when that happened. So I knew he would be able to maintain. He'll only get better. He was still a little inconsistent Saturday night but he got his first college football game under his belt."
Do you like having separate punter, separate kickoff guy and a separate kicker? Is it good for guys mentally only to have that one thing to focus on?
"There are probably some pluses to that. I haven't really given that a great deal of thought. But we are pretty diverse in the way we're handling it right now with Layne (Neumann) kicking the deep field goals, Richie (Bean) kicking off, and Layne will handle certain types of kickoffs, and Richie could have punted the other night, too. It has been very competitive. The great thing about those guys is they all have been very supportive of each other which I really admire. They've certainly been team-spirited and team-oriented guys."
How do you think Justin Brantly handled that situation (punter) as a true freshman?
"He did okay. I think he'll handle it a lot better. I don't think y'all got to see the punch that his leg has. I think he'll continue to grow and I really believe he's got a chance, and we've had some great punters here in recent times, I think he's got a chance to be right up in that class. They weren't all that way the other night. He has a knack for kicking the ball dead inside the 10-yard line. If you watched his high school tape, it's amazing how many that he would kick and it would go dead. It was like the air went out of it. He did it again the other night. But he's got a really good leg and so I think we'll see even more from him."
(Defensive Coordinator) Carl (Torbush) talked about the lack of tackling at the point of attack. Evaluate the play.
"I think we were all a little disappointed with giving up as many rushing yards as we did. But I think first off, before we talk about that, Clemson played very well. To play in a first game and to not have a turnover, and not have any penalties that mattered really and put them behind the chains, and to be able to remain patient was really a credit to them. Now, I thought our inside people can play better and will play better. I thought our ends played very solid. They had a pretty good game. But they were determined to run the ball and they stayed patient and they did a pretty good job. You know, you still got to remember anything that you say about the defense, that we did not give up a defensive touchdown Saturday night. Most of the time when that happens you'll have a good chance to win the game. To their credit they made every stop they needed to in the red zone. That kicker made every kick imaginable including one blown dead, and that last snap they did a great job of getting that one down. But we did keep them out of the end zone and that was really great to see. Now obviously we've got to continue to work and get better at some other things."
Did you envision having as many changes on the offensive line as you did? You're very young.
"Well, we played the best players and we did know that that was going to be that way. I didn't announce it to y'all because, as I told you, I didn't want Clemson to know of our changes. I have to say that I think Cody Wallace is going to be a really, really good center. He is as good an athlete as I have coached at center in a long time. I'm not saying he's better than Geoff (Hangartner) was when he was there, but he's a better athlete than Geoff. His movement up to second level is really good. And that was his first college football game. Yemi (Babalola) is going to be a good football player. He made a mental mistake or two the other night, but for the most part I thought he played pretty well. We played Jami and we played Dominique Steamer, so we played seven deep. The guy we didn't play was Chris Yoder. We wish we could have because of what he's given to this program to this point in time but Chris backed up Cody the other night and sometimes it's hard to take your center out of the game. When you run 50 snaps, substitution is not easy, period. We had six snaps in the fourth quarter, 50 snaps in the game. You'd like to think your offense can play 50 snaps without a lot of substitution, and we did a decent job with that.
Do you know how many plays Jami ended up playing?
"I don't know off the top of my head."
Is it disappointing from your standpoint that he has not done what he's obviously needed to do to be the starter because he's a senior and has been around for 29 starts?
"Well, you know, Jami's been through a lot. I'm never going to say I'm disappointed with Jami Hightower. I'll defend him all the way. He's had to fight through some unusual situations and we don't need to discuss them, but in his behalf he's worked very hard in August. It wasn't just a slam dunk that Jami didn't start, but it was clear that Yemi was the better player. He would have beaten out a lot of people the way he played in August. I wish I had a lot of guys with Yemi's attitude. He likes to knock them out and he's irritated when they get up and he wants to come back and do it again. He brings a physical demeanor to the game. I'm excited about the future of this offensive line. You know, it's yet to be determined this year just exactly what they'll accomplish, but there's one senior playing on that group right now and you know there's still some guys-Travis Schneider, Chris Yoder and some other people-that we're really excited about. I really think we have the makings of a good line going forward."
Justin Brantly. He got that first punt off and did a good job of it. It's probably one he'd like to forget. What happened on the coverage there?
"We got too wadded up. Our two gunners that we split out didn't do a good job and got pushed into the middle of the field a little bit. And then the rest of our coverage--the wall impacted where they set up and left them pushed in to the middle of the field and Justin probably didn't hit a punt as high as you need to have to be able to cover as well as you'd like to. So it was a combination of a lot of issues there."
How do you feel about this team? You know, you hate to go back to Utah every time. Do you feel a lot better about this time compared to this time last year? Both are losses but they seem so different how they came about.
"You know, we went to a tough place to play. We played a team that played very well. I think Clemson is a much-improved ball club. I do not think we will play more than a couple of teams with more speed on defense than they had. When I watched the film again Monday morning I was really impressed with their ends and their linebackers' speed. They have good team speed across their defensive front. They can get out of position and recover. That's what speed does for you. You know, we went to a much more hostile and difficult place to play. It's hard to compare Utah and Clemson. Utah went all the way to go on to the Fiesta Bowl. They don't play in the ACC, so-we'll see how Clemson does the rest of the year but they played a good football game. When you analyze our football team across the board I think we're better in a lot of areas. We do have marked areas that we know we can improve. I think sometimes as a coach you like to say you can improve at something but you probably know that it's going to take two or three years to improve at this and not two or three games. We have a lot of areas that in two or three games we can improve. You play a tough game as an opener and you're still learning about your team on the road. We haven't had what I would think the best way to start a season scheduling wise so far, and you know, that's the hand we were dealt. We've got to make it work. I do feel good coming out of the game in a lot of regards in where we're going. Last year when we came out of Utah game we had a lot of questions when we got on the plane. One was open the door and jump. (This time) We certainly didn't come home feeling at all like that. We did come home disappointed that we came up a little short but we didn't come up you know with all the questions that still remained in place like we did last year."
Reggie's pass to (Chad) Schroeder was about as good as you could make. Early in the game he looked off. Was he throwing high or wide? He seemed maybe a little jacked up.
"I think he was a little jacked up. I think he was a little excited and you know we were just on the edge. We weren't quite as crisp as we want to be and, you know, Jason's (Carter) pass to DeQawn (Mobley). That was a critical part of the game We found a lot of plays in this game that could have made a difference. Any time you have a first game like that you can. In the first quarter we had a chance to be up 14-0 and we got three points out of it. Penalties certainly hurt, and not being able to get that many points, at least 10 points on the board, for a team on the road, that hurts. You hope you're going to recover from it. Obviously we did recover but we just didn't hold on."
You only had 50 snaps, so it's hard for you to play a bunch of running backs. But did Courtney (Lewis) and Chris (Alexander) show enough that maybe if they can stay healthy those are your go-to guys and you're happy with that?
"Well, both of those are going to have major roles this year. But I don't want to sound like we're not still excited about Samson Taylor and Jay Lucas. It's not always easy to play all of them but I think we can find roles and continue to look for roles to do that. It's not easy to take Courtney Lewis off the field. He made a run on our sideline the other night and ended up making five yards, and that might have been as fine a run as I've seen him make. He probably should have lost six and how he made five out of it I still say watch the film. That's good recruiting, that wasn't good coaching."
How did you see him play that game? It seemed like he looked like the old Courtney Lewis. How encouraging is that?
"Well, very. We thought he'd look that way. You know, he's been healthy all through camp and we utilized him and we kept him healthy through camp. For us to go forward and have a good football team I think a healthy Courtney is a big part of that obviously. One of the encouraging things about the other night was having almost 240 yards rushing, which was pretty good. Maybe we caught them off balance with a few things but we ran the ball fairly well at times. We didn't throw it as well as we thought we would or I think we will."
Were you nervous at any point sending five freshman and five red shirts out against a team like Clemson?
"You're always a little anxious when you put guys out for their first college football game and how it's going to turn out. A lot of them responded really well, which we hoped they would. We knew they could and it's a good building block to go forward with and to do that wish we could have played more of them in a game like that, but like I say, that's a hard one to reach in and do a lot of mass substitution or liberal substitution such a tight game."
What do you have to do to improve the third down defense?
I think the first key is be better on first down. Again, the last drive the other night, there was a nine-yard gain and six-yard gain. We had two penalties on first down that made it second and five. You have success on third down when you're in better third-down situations and we probably weren't in as many good down and distance third-down situations as you hope to be. Now, with third and two, you've still got to find a way to make the stop and we didn't get that done. But really I think the first key we talked about as coaches is that somebody's got to get behind the chains for us. We've got to be able to dictate the direction that they take a little bit better than we were able to do."
Did Alton Dixon play? There was some confusion on whether or not he did.
"I think he played on special teams."
Did Arkeith Brown play any defensive snaps?
"No. It was all special teams. He did an exceptional job. The first kickoff of his career he was like a torpedo going down there and made another stop on a kickoff. It's exciting to see the way he plays."
If you had to line up against the Big 12 in a 4x100 relay race, is he in your starting 4x1?
"I think so. He's fast. He's a good athlete. I haven't given a lot of thought to that one. But he is one of our fast guys."
You primarily played four linebackers. Is that a lot of pressure on those guys as the season goes on?
"Hopefully we can continue to develop that here in the next few weeks where we've got a little bit better rotation. Nurahda (Manning) a had a bad shoulder through August camp that limited his ability a little bit, as he gets better hopefully he's going to figure in that much more, and Steven Hodge and other guys. This was kind of a slug-it-out type of defensive game and those guys did a good job, but probably you're going to think you're going to need a deeper rotation as you go through the schedule."
One of the joys of what you do or fans do is second guess. Have you ever felt so second guessed over the past several days?
"I'm pretty insulated from what y'all say or what anybody else is saying. But nobody second guesses himself more than me. It's a lot easier when the game's over to say we should have gone for two. I was telling one of the coaches I think I've been criticized for going for two too early before. I don't know if I've been in that situation. With nine minutes and 30 seconds or whatever it was, and we had just went 80 yards in three plays, you just think there's going to be more points scored and with another touchdown on the board it's going to be a nine-point lead, and you know, sometimes I think you can get into that two-point cycle a little too early. Obviously right now I wish we would have gone for two and made it but, you know, we debated it on the head sets. That's one of those decisions, again, that you got to make it -- the right decision. If I could have known we'd only had three more plays the rest of the night I know what I would have done. You just don't think it's going to go that way, the way the game had been going. We played 16 snaps in the second half and scored 14 points. It's not like we weren't moving the ball pretty good most of the time. We got it back on those three plays we had and we didn't move the ball, and that probably hurt us as much as anything. I certainly am not trying to dodge any criticism for the call. I don't want make it sound that way. That's just what goes through your mind."
You went for two against Texas Tech with 11 minutes left last year.
"I did. Sometimes it's feeling like you've got a two point play in your pocket, too. And I didn't really feel like we did there. If I've erred before usually it's for being too aggressive and I probably wasn't that game."
You went for two in the first half against Virginia Tech a few years ago.
"Yeah, and there are probably more times where you probably say you did that a little too early. You should have gotten the sure point and let the game play itself out. On our two point cards there's how much time is left. That's the question you ask yourself and we debated it, and we decided there were going to be a lot more points scored in this game and a lot more possessions and a lot more things happen, and that wasn't true."
Jason Carter did a lot of things, throwing, running and catching. Do you plan on using him as versatile as that?
"We do. I think the great thing for Jason is that we had had this hope two years ago maybe to do that with him but he wasn't ready for all that. That was through our fault that we probably wanted to do a lot of that. He is ready for it now. His role is bigger. He returned kicks, threw passes, ran with the ball from the line of scrimmage, caught passes. Jason's a play maker and we're going to continue to try to utilize him in a number of ways and because he is so versatile we can do that. He's kind of a hybrid between a receiver and a running back. Of course he's got that former quarterback though in him, too, and we keep doing those kind of things."
Can we call him an "A" back again?
"We don't have that terminology but you could. We've gone away from just using that term in our offense. But that's essentially correct what you're saying."
--transcript courtesy Paula Frederick
