Meet The Press: Buffalo
9/6/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Sept. 6, 2010
Head Coach Art Briles
Opening Statement...
"I think the highlight of the night for Baylor University was the support that was presented prior to the game in the `March of the Bears', in the crowd at the game and the energy, the enthusiasm and the inspiration that they brought to the field. For us as a football team, for me as a football coach, that is why you do what you do. You do what you do to make people proud of who they believe in and who they love. That part of it was really, really humbling from our standpoint. Baylor President (Ken) Starr, (Baylor Athletic Director) Ian McCaw, (Director of the Baylor Sports Network) Doug Fertsch, (Baylor Associate AD / Facilities and Events) Tom Hill, (Baylor Associate AD for the `B' Association) Walter Abercrombie and all of the people who took part in making that happen, our hats are certainly off to them because they deserve a whole lot of credit for marketing and making everybody aware of what needs to happen to be a big-time college football program and we are closing the gap. Games like (last Saturday), there are no opponents that you ever go into the game thinking that you are going to win, you should win and it is a given win. But it is hard to feel challenged sometimes in football games and that is the good part about this week; we will feel challenged, we will be challenged and we will have to step our game up to come out with a `W'. From a coaching standpoint and a players' standpoint that is exciting coming into this week. We will have to play. We will have to play well to win the football game. We will have to execute to win the football game. We will have to cut down penalties on special teams and drive-killers to win the football game. Those are positives we are looking for this week going into the Buffalo game."
On the running game...
"I do not feel like we were very productive quite honestly. When you look at the stats I think we were 25/200 and that looks good. But the way we got it was not the way I want to do it. We did, from a schematic standpoint, protect some people the other night. We had some opportunities to do some things against some people that do that to us that we would normally do in other situations that we did not do the other night that would have allowed us to run the ball a lot more effectively. When you play against somebody that was playing us like (Sam Houston State was) it is going to be hit, hit, hit and miss, miss, miss. You are going to have four plays for minus yardage and then two for positive 80 and that is what you have to understand when you are playing that style of defense. But I do not like it; I like to be positive on every play."
On Buffalo's new style...
"They are different, of course. To be quite honest, the old Buffalo under (current Kansas head coach) Turner Gill we have not studied because they are different. How different are they than what they were before? I just have to go off of memory of what I have seen just through TV and a few things over the last five or six years. They were a little bit more tuned on offense. Defensively, they were mostly a four-man front. Whereas now, when we are looking at them, we are looking at a Cincinnati team because that is where the head coach is from, that is where the defensive coordinator is from and they are mirroring what Cincinnati has done for the last four or five years. Buffalo now is very similar to what Cincinnati has been the last few years under (current Notre Dame head coach) Brian Kelly and these guys. That is what we are going by. We have watched them on tape but schematically we have not studied what Buffalo was."
On Tevin Elliott's performance against Sam Houston State...
"He is a guy that we knew would play well because there are two or three things that you cannot hide and one of them is talent. You can try to disguise it any way you want to but when the opportunity presents itself, it is going to come out. Tevin does a great job of not hiding that. He is a very explosive player. He has an uncanny ability to unleash his body with a lot of force, which very few people have without any regard to what the consequences are. That is why he is a good football player. He understands how to thrust his body into situations. We have just hopefully seen the tip of the iceberg with him. I think he is special and we kind of walked into it last year in practice and scout. He was on our scout team and we put him at defensive end one day and we had to call him off. We could not block him. He is a guy that really is going to be special."
On Kendall Wright's performance against Sam Houston State...
"I think some of the blame for that was holding him out of three scrimmages, from a timing standpoint and working cohesiveness with Robert (Griffin III) and getting all of that in sync. But he is healthy, and that is why we held him out; we held him out to be healthy. It was a situation where, `were we pitching horseshoes? We were not, were we?' We were close on a few things, but close does not count. Like I said, the good thing about the other night was that we won the football game. The other good thing is that we can get a lot better and we will get a lot better. That is something that will happen for him and fortunately it happened for some other guys the other night. That is the way it goes."
On the defense's performance against Sam Houston State...
"Once again, real good strength, real good push, really unchallenged from a defensive line standpoint. We will have a lot more feel about where we are and where we are going to be after this Saturday than we did last Saturday. The guys did what they needed to do. We saw what we wanted to see out of the football game. What we wanted to see was intensity, strength, passion, speed and fearlessness. For the most part, throughout 60 minutes, we saw nearly all of that and that is what we are looking for. What you do is set something going into the game, see if you can get it and if you get it then, regardless of what the competition is, you have to do your job."
On using Buffalo's travel distance as an advantage...
"If you had asked me that two years ago, I would have been smiling and grinning saying that we had to use (the Texas heat) to our advantage. But after stepping on the field last September with Connecticut and seeing the outcome of that game here in Waco on a hot semi-fall day, I do not think it makes any difference. I think you have to go out and you have to play and you have to be the toughest, most physical football team on the field and I think you have a chance to win."
On Robert Griffin III's performance against Sam Houston State...
"He did what we wanted him to do early. I thought he really played well early. I thought he gave us a spark and made some good plays. I think we came out pretty hot in the game with a lot of energy, a lot of emotion and a lot of confidence. And as the game progressed a little bit, we pressed a little. I think we had some stuff we knew we should be getting and did not get and then consequently we just needed to relax a little bit and play and be a little more patient. And a lot of it was my fault quite honestly because if I'm hungry and someone puts a carrot out there in front of me, I am going to try to eat it. And maybe I should ask someone if they want to eat it first because I was very impatient. There is only one way to play and that is full tilt. If you have got a car that runs, put the pedal down and let's go. So we are not going to change."
On Jay Finley's performance against Sam Houston State...
"More gratifying was seeing the hole that he got to run through because our offensive line did a really good job on that. Robert T. Griffin did a great job, as did Phillip Blake. They did a nice job of making that happen for him. He had gotten space and had to make one guy miss and lose his helmet and that is where you get in a little bit of trouble with the man pressure behind it because those guys are occupied and are unable to have their eyes on the ball."
On the number of penalties against Sam Houston State...
"It is always a concern. It is one of the things that I am always concerned about, especially early in the season going in. There were two or three of those that were unnecessary without a doubt. We had some special team penalties, probably about close to 40 yards on special teams that really hurt us. We had one penalty on a third-down stop - a late hit on a QB - and they continued to drive and they went down the field and got three points when they would have been punting from their own 22 which is a big field-position change. Those are things that you cannot let happen. Throughout the game, penalties are going to happen and we understand that, but they do not need to be self-inflicted."
Sophomore QB Robert Griffin III
On the running game...
"When (Sam Houston State) did load the box, they shut us down a few times, but when you load the box like that and you have so many people that close to the line of scrimmage, you can pop some long runs. You will get stalemated for a while, but eventually you will pop some long ones. And Jay (Finley) did that for us. That was a great run for him personally and a good spark for the team knowing that he is ready to go."
On being patient against Sam Houston State's defense...
"You have to be patient; you can't press. We watched teams that had played (Sam Houston State) last year and they torched them because they tried to play those similar schemes and sometimes they went soft. We just wanted to come out and be ourselves and do what we do - not try to just run verticals the whole game. We did that for a little bit and it just wasn't working, so we tried to just go back to what we normally do. The way they were playing, so tight, it took away a lot of the shorter throws and you had to go vertically and that is why we had a lot of drive-killers with dropped balls and incomplete passes. You won't really see a team do that consistently every down and if they do we will be ready to go because we have seen it before."
On what he expects to see out of Buffalo...
"From what Coach Briles has told me thus far and watching a little film on them, they are athletic on defense. Sam Houston State wasn't bad skill guys wise, but the biggest difference between Division I FBS and Division I FCS is the lineman. Buffalo has some athletic guys on defense. They have had success in the past and they know how to win and they are going to come in here motivated."
Sophomore RB Jared Salubi
On Sam Houston State loading the box on defense...
"Sometimes it is frustrating because you know the game plan changes when they load the box like that. But with the talented running back crew that we do have, we kind of like a challenge like that. If you are going to stack that many people in there, we are going to show you something."
On Baylor's running backs...
"If Jay (Finley) was doing his thing and he got tired or needed to come out, me or Terrance (Ganaway) or even Isaac (Williams) could go in there and do just as good and be just as impactful or powerful to our offense."
On his role with the team...
"It is always team first with me. Wherever Coach Briles wants to put me to better help my team that is where I am going to play. I kind of see myself as more of a tempo-change kind of person - more speed and get out there in space more."
Senior LT Danny Watkins
On Baylor's season-opening win last Saturday...
"I think we did pretty good; there is definitely always room for improvement. We're never going to see a frontline like (Sam Houston State) again, but as far as our pick-up goes, I think we did a pretty good job so that's a good foundation for us. If we ever see anything funky like that again we'll be able to refer back to this."
On responding to a new defense this week...
"The defense we're seeing this week is quite a bit faster, quite a bit more aggressive so we're going to have to up our play as well and match that. We've got a lot of good backs (in the backfield) and they're relying on us to make a hole (for them). I think Coach Briles is coming up with some good stuff on how we're going to react to (Buffalo). We're just going to have to keep focus and keep working hard and definitely be more aggressive coming off the ball."
On improving between games one and two...
"This one was kind of blowing the dust off and seeing what we've got. All the hard work that we've been putting in and all training and practice carried over to that first game well and now we know what we're going to do and carry it over into this week and pick it up from there."
On `March of the Bears' before the game and the crowd at the game...
"I was on the bus and I was thinking this guy must be lost and then we saw the line of people and I thought `this is unreal'. That got us fired up and then we ran into the stadium and they told us it was just about full. For us that is a great feeling and it gets us fired up. It's good to know that people are behind you like that and I really hope it carries over. People come out to see a good show and I think we gave them one this past weekend so hopefully we can do the same this weekend."
Senior S Byron Landor
On Robert Griffin III's performance...
"Actually, I kind of had my fingers crossed the whole time. I was kind of scared to see him get hit or to see him have pressure coming up on him. But he looked good; he played good. People wanted a lot out of him the first game. It's a process. And like I said, he looked good to me. I'm anxious to see him get out there again and make some more plays."
On practicing against a good offense...
"I can tell you honestly with the wide receivers that I practice with every day, I really think that all of the wide receivers that we have on this team are All-Big 12 caliber players if not All-Americans. They're all good, they're all fast, they're all smart and they all have good hands. I think going against them every day and going against Robert (Griffin III) every day makes us as a defense so much better. I think it's very important because when we start playing teams with good receivers and good offense, it won't be a shock to us because we've seen it before in practice."
