Tuesday Media Luncheon Quotes and Audio

September 05, 2006

Texas A&M coaches and players met with members of the press on Tuesday at the weekly football media luncheon, held at the Bright Football Complex.

The Aggies are preparing to host Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday at Kyle Field. Kickoff is set for 6 p.m. (CDT).

Links to audio clips are available to the right.

COACH FRAN: What can I do for y'all today?

THE QUESTION: Did you see anything on the film you didn't like? Did you learn anything from the film you didn't see on Saturday?

COACH FRAN: I think you always learn from the video. Good and bad and things you need to work on and that's good. You know the thing that bothers you the most was the turnovers. That's not normally characteristic of us and that stuck out far more than anything else in that regard.

THE QUESTION: You've said before that sometimes players have to make a mistake in a game for what the coach was saying to really sink in. Do you think that was the case with Mike Goodson and the fumbles on Saturday?

COACH FRAN: Well, I hope so. I mean, I think Michael just wanted to do well and make something happen, and he got a tough lesson. Fortunately for us the lesson came in a game where we could overcome those mistakes and we really haven't had the benefit of many games like that since I've been here where you could make some of those kind of mistakes and still be in control of the football game and they weren't threatening as far as the outcome of the game was going to come out. So that was the good thing about our opener.

THE QUESTION: How did you feel about naturally being able to correct that (Goodson?™s ball security). He told us a little bit earlier he's holding the ball more upright now instead of letting it sag. Can you speak to that?

COACH FRAN: Well, Mike is guilty of being loose with the football. I mean he has been through August camp, and we dwelled on that a lot with him. Really the second one that he lost he had good ball security and the guy just really put his hand on it and stripped him and made a great defensive play as much as anything else. You know sometimes in traffic you have to learn to put both hands on the football. On the first one he was loose with the football and he had a couple of other carries where he was a little loose with it, he just didn't get it knocked loose. He will go to work this week and put, I think, purpose into that. He knows that he doesn't want to do that and that he will play more if he doesn't do that. I'll be surprised if he doesn't improve on that this week.

THE QUESTION: His style of running, the way he is real willy-nilly, he will spin, he?™s electrifying, but does that lend itself to the ball doing that?

COACH FRAN: Probably does a little bit. I may have said this the other night. To me it was like he was trying to hit a home run every play and as I was telling him good backs learn patience and make 4 yards every play and then hit the home run when it's there. Mike certainly has the burst to do that. I just think he was wound up for his first college football game and trying to do something spectacular every time he touched the football and as a result it turned out that way a little bit for him. He certainly did make a couple of really nice runs. You can see the talent I've talked about without a doubt on a couple of his carries and he's got an exciting future.

THE QUESTION: He?™s fun to watch.

COACH FRAN: He is fun to watch. He will be a lot more fun to watch when he takes care of the ball.

THE QUESTION: What do you need to see from him now? You mentioned how in this game you were able to get away with it. But now putting him in situations where maybe he couldn't get away with it if he were to fumble again? What needs to happen first for you to have that confidence in him?

COACH FRAN: I think he needs to go to practice today and practice ball security and be focused on that and show us in practice that he is going to keep the points of pressure the right way on the football and not be slinging it out here loose. When we see him do that it will give us more confidence to put him in more situations.

THE QUESTION: How did your offensive line grade out, especially on pass protection? COACH FRAN: They graded out well in pass protection. Our troubles there were our backs not our offensive line. (The offensive line) had a good grade for the game. Corey Clark played his best game since he's been at Texas A&M. Kirk Elder had a good game. Any protection problems we had were more a result of running backs not doing a good enough job of blocking the guy they should have, or maybe missed a guy they should have picked up.

THE QUESTION: Was that more often than not spread formations or?...

COACH FRAN: Not necessarily. The pass that we hit Martellus (Bennett) with, Brandon (Leone) blocked the linebacker but he hit him one good shot and the guy came free and hit Stephen right about there. You didn?™t see it probably because you followed the ball, but an instant sooner and he wouldn't have gotten that one off. And I'm just picking that play out, not trying to pick on Brandon. Courtney Lewis did a pretty good job of pass protection to his credit. That's been something Courtney's worked hard at and he had a good solid game. The other backs all had some protection issues and since it was the first game they saw quite a bit of alignment things that kept them off balance the other night.

THE QUESTION: Is that a problem that concerns you this stage with those guys because Goodson is a freshman and Jorvorskie's a young guy. Is this easily correctible in practices or does it just take games and experience?

COACH FRAN: It's very correctible. Through a number of different ways but again, I think No. 1, they need to make sure they know who they're responsible for and then No. 2 they need to use a lot of fight and grit and technique to accomplish the task of getting that guy blocked.

THE QUESTION: Did Chad Schroeder look like his old self to you?

COACH FRAN: He did. He dropped one ball there at the end of the game that he might have run for another 30 or 40 yards. Other than that, I think Chad looked like he hadn't missed a day.

THE QUESTION: I noticed that (Stephen) McGee went to him quite a bit early on. Do you think he has a certain comfort level with Chad that has been established there, or was that just the way the plays were being called?

COACH FRAN: I think probably that as much as anything. But I do think every quarterback and every coach is comfortable with Chad Schroeder so you are pretty confident of what you're going to get every time with Chad and that's true of some of our other guys too. Chad is certainly one of those guys that we have a pretty good comfort level with and I think Stephen threw the ball where his read took him to. You know we obviously want to put Chad in the reading progression as much as we can and then I think if Stephen were sitting here I think he would say he is comfortable with Chad.

THE QUESTION: Did he make you nervous on a couple of those punt returns?

COACH FRAN: He did. You know the last one I told him don't go jump on hand grenades. He was trying to catch the ball, which, normally if you let a punt hit the ground you're going to come up on the bad side of the yardage total so he was making an effort to catch it. Now, the one before that actually hit one of our defenders' foot so that's why he jumped on that one on the bounce. The last one, that thing had kind of a sinkerball to it and Chad probably should have gotten away from that one.

THE QUESTION: Generally do you feel confident in him catching the ball?

COACH FRAN: We do.

THE QUESTION: Three years ago sitting here Courtney was a red shirt freshman. We talked about that was one concern with him as a young back was his protection. How has his progression been over the years with him getting to the point now where it?™s the opposite and he's the one getting talked about being very good at it. How did he improve over the years? And do you see that happening with him (Goodson)?

COACH FRAN: Well, I think Courtney went through some of the same things early as Mike did and that's not uncharacteristic of young backs going from high school to college football. At every level you climb the contact is a little more intense and the number of people that get to the ball to make the hit is more intense and the effort being put forth by defenses on stripping the football is probably as high as its ever been I think in this game.

THE QUESTION: Talk about Mark Dodge and what an asset it is to have a guy that mature and that has had some of the life experiences he's had as a guy you look up to?

COACH FRAN: Well, Mark's made an impact on everybody here. With his enthusiasm, his maturity and his enjoyment of playing the game. Then just with his life experiences that people have asked him about. His maturity is probably the thing I think has helped him the most in being able to play as early as he is.

THE QUESTION: When you recruited Mark did you know that much about his history or as you talked to him in his living room did you find out a bit more about him or did you just say he is a good player I want to go get him. How did that take place?

COACH FRAN: Athletically was the first thing we were interested in obviously. As you go through the process you learn more about the individual and you know we probably didn't learn as much about all of the 911 things that he had gone through until he was actually here. You?™ve only got so much time to visit with him so you can't sometimes have enough time to sit around and visit about those things as you might have enjoyed hearing about. But it was his athletic ability and spirit that first grabbed us.

THE QUESTION: Remember a few years ago when Red (Bryant) was elected to the leadership council as a redshirt freshman we talked about how rare it was. Red at least had been here in the fall, Mark (Dodge) was essentially elected after a few weeks on campus. How surprised or not surprised and impressed were you when that happened?

COACH FRAN: Well, before it happened I would have probably said I don't know if it could happen. But with Mark Dodge it's easy to see how it is possible for that to happen because of the type of young man he is.

THE QUESTION: In terms of those guys on the linebacking corps, what are your first game impressions? Obviously a lot of different guys played and you talked about the age and maturity of most of these guys. Your thought on it and how you feel it?™s progressing.

COACH FRAN: Well, I was pretty pleased with their performance. You know we only missed six tackles the other night, which is pretty good. I think any time you keep it down that low that's not to bad although you don't want to miss any. The linebackers didn't have, I don't know if they had any missed tackles. You kind of look at them as a corps of linebackers because we've got a group there that we can play and feel comfortable with. Anthony Lewis did not get to play in the game the other night but probably will before the year is over and we can add him to that collection. He needs a few more reps and everything. For the first time I think we feel like we've got a little more depth to be able to play in there than we have before.

THE QUESTION: Could Anthony (Lewis) play this week perhaps or --

COACH FRAN: Yes. He could have played last week. He probably wouldn't have played a lot or at key times maybe in the game yet and he would have made some mistakes probably. He's still kind of catching up with all that, but he's really caught back up pretty quick.

THE QUESTION: Any other freshman that didn't get in the other night that might before the year's up?

COACH FRAN: I can't think of anybody that comes to mind. We played 70 guys last week and how many true freshmen? Twenty-one guys played their first college football game and five true freshmen. So I don't think there will be any at this point in time.

THE QUESTION: When you first recruited Kellen Heard did you think he was probably the size of an offensive lineman at that point and just hoped he could play defensive line?

COACH FRAN: I think we've always felt Kellen could play D-line. He is an amazingly athletic and agile big guy. You know in AAU basketball you would hear about him and how many three point shots he hit. You don't normally think of a guy like Kellen outside the arc dropping three pointers in the game but he is just exceptionally athletic for his size.

THE QUESTION: In the off-season did he get that size down a little bit?

COACH FRAN: He did.

THE QUESTION: How concerned were you and how impressed have you been by where he is now as compared to when he got here.

COACH FRAN: Kellen was not in great shape when he got here. He probably weighed too much. Last summer he lost about 60 pounds and he missed last fall and Kellen just had to kind of learn to play college football a little bit after being the biggest guy in the game (during high school) and being able to maybe get by with very little technique and only his athletic ability to be successful. That's what has probably taken him more time to now understand how to play against other 300-pounders that are just as strong as him and that held him back last year a little bit and he's really made some advancement this spring and fall and then obviously to make the plays that he's making. He's learning how to play hard and learning how to go hard every snap and to recognize blocks and what people are trying to do to him and really last year at this time it was all a blur for him.

THE QUESTION: How close was he to getting to play last year?

COACH FRAN: Oh, I don't know if he ever got exceptionally close. We had hope for him to play but he just wasn't ready to play last year.

THE QUESTION: Can you talk a little about Louisiana-Lafayette?

COACH FRAN: I think offensively they run the ball very well. They?™ve got a nice scheme. They run a lot of zone option, they read it pretty well. They have a big offensive line. I like their team speed. I think they all can motor pretty good. Secondary has pretty good speed. Their entire defense has pretty good speed. They are a pretty salty offensive team. This will be a good test for our defense. They are somewhat like us in some regards yet we have our differences as far as offensive styles. That probably helps them a little bit in preparing for us and probably helps us a little bit in preparing for them I hope. These guys won a lot of games at the end of last year, they won their conference and they've got a little swagger to them. I know LSU got on them pretty good early and got a key interception the other night that got them behind the eight ball a little bit but I'm sure they'll be ready to play and I know they'll be a step up from last week.

THE QUESTION: How would you assess your secondary's pass coverage the other night?

COACH FRAN: You know, we had two or three guys that were fairly open that you wish we had covered a little bit better but we did not give up a big play really. We didn't have any thrown over our head. We kept the ball in front of us and made tackles and we were generally in pretty good position most of the time. There were a couple of times that they had some guys open, one of them they dropped that they could have done a little more to us on. All in all for a first game and everything I was pleased with the start that they had.

THE QUESTION: Special teams seem to be improved and coaches say they stress it every year. Did you do anything different stressing it? Switch up responsibilities or anything like that

COACH FRAN: Not really. We made some changes on our kickoff return in how we're doing it and may be a little bit on punt return but I think the biggest thing is older more experienced players are playing on there now. In the past when you were a little bit younger inexperienced team, that lends itself for those units to maybe really be a little bit more inexperienced and we have more guys that have played now even though we don't have a lot of seniors we still have more guys that have been out there and played games and I think that helps our special teams as much as anything right now. Kerry Franks has been out there a number of days and he blocks a punt has a nice kickoff return Justin is in his second year. Things like that make a big difference. Last year in the opening game Justin probably wasn't even breathing in regular patterns. He was pretty cool and collected the other night, he even fielded one snap that was pretty bad and got off a nice punt.

THE QUESTION: How is the deep snapping going? That was a big hole to fill with Boone gone?

COACH FRAN: Chris (Smith) did all but one snap the other night, Corey Gibas did the other one. We will kind of evaluate those two at practice. Chris had the one that was kind of low, but for the most part Chris was okay. Chris has the best velocity, he is possibly a little more erratic at times but Justin fortunately has been able to field them all, so it?™s not like he has had a lot of bad snaps or anything like that. It's hard to replace a Boone Stutz who's deep snapping now for the Atlanta Falcons. I think I predicted that one. You don't have a lot of those sitting around waiting for the next opportunity. The fact that Boone was here motivated Chris. He wanted to take that role and work very hard at it.

THE QUESTION: After you watched the film, did anyone in the secondary really stand out to you?

COACH FRAN: I thought Melvin Bullitt played a pretty solid game. I thought all of our corners were solid. We missed a couple of tackles there. Johnathan Batson got in and I thought it was good that we got to play him the amount that we got to and he did some good things. Melvin had the best overall game. Jordan Peterson was very solid and in the right position the majority of the time.

THE QUESTION: You have probably already talked about this, but what were your impressions of Courtney Lewis and what he gave you on Saturday.

COACH FRAN: Courtney didn't have a lot of yardage or a lot of flashy numbers but he gave us a really consistent effort. We elected him one of our players of the week because he made a nice catch or two, picked up guys in pass protection well. When called upon he did run the ball well. I thought he had a good solid football game. In previous years Courtney might rush for more yardage but not make as many blocks or do the little things that y'all don't look for with quite as much scrutiny as we do. I thought Courtney did a nice job on all that.

THE QUESTION: Do you envision him as probably more of a back that's going to do some of everything for you this year more so than in the past?

COACH FRAN: I think that's certainly true. In the past there was a period of time when Courtney was younger that we were probably going to take him out on a pass play unless we were going to free release him just being concerned about his ability to pass protect. We don't have that feeling as much as we did last year so I think he's more multipurpose. And you know he knows this is his contract negotiation year I guess you could say. He's a senior and he knows that the NFL scouts are watching. They can see him run with it and they can see him catch it. They want to know if he will protect that golden arm quarterback that's back there. That's like it was when I had LaDainian (Tomlinson at TCU). That's the only question they asked me is will he pick up the blitz? That?™s the only thing they were uncertain of. Obviously he must have done a good job of it. Courtney's put a lot of emphasis on that personally.

THE QUESTION: You have a lot of talent on offense. Is it going to be tough to keep everyone happy?

COACH FRAN: I hope not. Nobody got a lot of carries the other night or a lot of plays. Certainly we do have different guys we can go to. It's never wrong to want the football. I talked to Jorvorskie on Sunday. He didn't play a lot the other night because of situations and how we handled things and he was good with it. Our guys are not selfish right now. They may want more and would like more but they certainly have not had any complaints about anything yet.