2020 UTSA Football
Media Roundtable
Oct. 12, 2020
Head Coach Jeff Traylor
On his takeaways from the game against BYU after watching game film …
"I thought our kids, again, gave amazing effort. I was extremely proud of how they hung in there and kept battling. It is probably the first time the entire year that our special teams and our defense did not set our offense up with great field position the entire ball game. Our offense had to carry their own weight and drive long fields and execute some long drives. I was very pleased with how much more consistent we were offensively. It is not that our defense played bad or our special teams played bad, because they didn't. They just didn't give us the short field they had been giving the entire year."
On Lowell Narcisse's performance …
"Every time the kid gets in the game he brings us down the field and we score touchdowns. He gets better every week. We couldn't have a nicer young man, and he prepares. All four of those young men (Frank Harris, Josh Adkins, Lowell Narcisse, Jordan Weeks) are amazing people, and they have a great room. You can tell they take care of each other and how much they care for each other. None of them like to be over there on the sideline. They all want to be out there playing, but (Lowell Narcisse) got his opportunity, went in there and played as close to perfect as possible."
On mental and physical toll of the season so far …
"This is an analogy, but we are playing Florida, Alabama and Georgia back to back weeks as far as the physical toughness of what we have had to go against. You know how physical UAB is. You know how massively big BYU was. Now you have an Army team who is just different. The best part of their day is football practice. That is the easiest part of their day, when they go to football practice. We are going to be smart this week. We have conference play after this. Six games in a row. We are coming home, and we know we are getting better every week. We know we have another great opponent, but we enjoy playing well. We don't enjoy losing. Our kids have gained a real confidence in how well they can play football, and it doesn't have to be anything crazy. Our best is good enough. We don't need to put on new socks, a different sweat band or a new warmup. Let's just do what we do. Let's just be extraordinary at the ordinary. Let's be extra physical on defense. Let's take great pride in a team-run team. Let's kick the football and coach really well. Our kids have really bought into that. You saw the passing game jump up for us. You saw receivers running amazing routes and making some really great plays. We are getting better. Losing is not ever fun, but we are getting better each week."
On how to prepare for the physicality of opponents …
"It is tough. As much physical right now as mental. What can I do for the troops' moral? Morale is very big. What can a head coach (do)? What kind of pranks can he play? What can he do to smile? What can we do to keep this thing alive? Football is supposed to be fun. Somewhere along the way we decided it wasn't supposed to be fun anymore. Football is supposed to be fun. We all went out when we were young, all picked teams, and we played some football. Especially when the Cowboys got through playing on Thanksgiving. We were going to round up the neighborhood, and we are going to go play some ball. We've got to remind these young men that it is still supposed to be fun. I want to make sure we keep the psychological part just as important as the physical part."
On mental wear and tear from playing close games …
"We play so many kids, that helps. We rotate a lot of players. That does help because it keeps competition alive and well. It also takes hits off of people, keeps people fresh. You can tell the wear and tear by the cast we have out there on the field. We have lost a lot of players, and we just keep having another man step up. I think both things are just as important."
On preparing for a game that was added late in the schedule-making process …
"I came here this morning early, real early. I spoke to the Army ROTC when it was still dark. When I came in my office, someone was already here. Coach (Tyrone) Nix was back there already before me, and he was already watching them. Obviously, we studied them a lot last night. I think our scout team is going to be our most important team of the week. I had them all stand up in the team meeting last night. They have to take great ownership in this. It is very hard to duplicate this offense at the speed of the game. It usually takes a couple series to get used to the acclimation of the speed of the game when you play these kinds of teams. We can't afford that. We have been in too many close games. We can't waste two series getting used to the speed of the game. Our scout team has to come out and give us a great look so our defense can get used to the speed of the game right now in practice."
On the last time he coached against a triple-option team …
"We played Navy at SMU, and that is always just the frustrating part. Who is going to play quarterback? Who is going to play fullback? You basically just have everybody raise hands. Who is going to play? Who ran option football in high school? We know pretty much which quarterback is going to play it the best, which slots are going to use all of the crazy motions, and which fullback is used to having the mesh point. Those other kinds of things are very important. Usually when you know your schedule, you go ahead and game plan all summer long so when the week comes, you just pull out your folder and go over your calls. We are scrambling, obviously. The whole year has just been that way. It is what it is."
On coaching Rashad Wisdom on avoiding targeting penalties …
"We went over that, again. In the 1990s, I was coaching at Jacksonville (High School), and one of my favorite players I have ever coached was a young man named Raymond Franklin. Raymond had a habit of dropping his head at times. I told the team the story of that. Raymond had an unfortunate incident happen because he ducked his head. I am not trying to scare anybody. I am speaking facts of the young man's life. He (Wisdom) needs to see where he hits. He has to get his face up. I love the way he plays, how hard he plays. He is such a great leader. He is so inspirational to my players, to my team. It was a huge loss again. We all love Rashad. Football is going to be over at some point. I coached Josh McCown, and he is still in the National Football League. He is 41, but we hope Josh is even going to outlive how long he played football. There is a lot left after football. We need to keep Rashad safe. We are coaching that with Coach (Tyrone) and Coach (Jess) Loepp. All of us are trying to reach him to let him know that we want him to be a great father, a great friend and husband one day. There is life after football."
On the run game versus the passing game …
"Other people know about our triangle of toughness now. They are studying us. They realize we have the leading rusher in the country. There are obvious throwing lanes out there right now because people are so committed to stopping Sincere (McCormick). If you go back and study the film, the first two drives, BYU played their base defense. We ran the ball right down the field, and they made an adjustment. They started putting some extra guys in the box and that created some throwing lanes. You don't go 17 for 20 without having some nice places to put it. Two of those throws, he put them in there, but the other 15 were nice lanes created by our offensive lines, our tight ends and our running back because of that mentality. People know we are committed to running the football. It is a fine line. That is our culture, and we are going to commit to that. When there are that many people in there, you have to be able to throw the football and complete it. We have great receivers and great quarterbacks who can do that, so we have to be able to adjust a little bit and make some plays with our arms. Everybody knows we can block and run."
On balancing improvement as a team without receiving the results of a win …
"It is a philosophy. It is something we talk about all the time. Are my kids less today than they were against Texas State or SFA or Middle Tennessee? I would tell you they played better. When you grade our video, our kids played better. Actually, we played our best game Saturday. Where is that balance? They have to trust you at the same time. It stings when everybody you see tells you, 'Man, you lost again. Great effort, but we didn't win.' We are competitors. We want to win. That is where that balance comes in of teaching young men that doing your best and honoring whatever you believe in with all of your ability, that is what real victory is. We just have enough confidence in our athletes and our coaching staff that if we do our very best and keep stacking that on top of each other, we are going to end up winning more ball games than losing. I know that sounds crazy, but I gave them another analogy. I love to play basketball. I know for a fact when there is one second left, and I am at the free-throw line and have a one-and-one to win the ball game, if all I am thinking about is 'oh my gosh, if I make this free throw, we are going to win the game' I am fixing to choke it up. Instead of a 15-foot free throw, it becomes a 14-foot, 10-inch free throw off the front of the rim because I am going to be too tight. Where if I go up there and think I am about to trust my technique and shoot my very best shot, I am going to drop buckets. That is a mindset that we try to teach our players all the time, and we live by it."
On communicating the level of play with opponents …
"I know y'all are going to remind us when we did something we were not supposed to do. I don't have to do a lot of that. Everywhere they go right now, everyone is telling them how good they did. That is where I have to be careful. We don't need to have this false sense because the objective is still to win the ball game. We played our very best, and I want to celebrate that. We still show highlight videos. We still are bragging on our kids, but we are still showing the bad video. We do both. We don't change our philosophy, but this is where you guys can help me. It does remind my guys that we did go in there with some injuries where no one gave us a chance. A critical play, if you go back, we just executed fourth and one on our minus 41. We got the first down, and we ran power and gained eight or nine yards. The momentum had totally flipped. I think all of us were like, 'Uh oh, we are fixing to go down there and do this.' Then we got that holding penalty. That was a real pivotal turn in the ball game. We have to be better at stuff like penalties in the kicking game and critical penalties on critical drives. That is something we can control that we need to be better at."
On having to prepare for the triple option …
"Opportunity or adversity? Military City USA. We know how important the Army is to this city, and we understand the importance of that game. It is worth it. Speaking to the ROTC this morning, the excitement. I wish the crowd could be there for us. I think it would be a really cool experience for our kids. In a football sense, it really gets into can you do your job? Can you really play the dive? When it is your responsibility to play the quarterback, can you do it? When it is your responsibility to play the pitch, can you do it? It sounds so simple, but if you just line up and give them the same look every time, those guys can coach too. Now you have to have change ups on who is playing the quarterback, who is playing the dive, and who is playing the pitch. Not to mention, they are really good at cut blocking. They are coming in there trying to rip you kneecaps off, and you have to play disciplined football. They wear on you. Over and over, you know they are going to go for it on a fourth down. All of those kinds of things, it is just mental and physical toughness. It is going to be literally that kind of game for us."
On using experience from last season against Army to prepare for Saturday's game …
"Our guys do speak of that. That does help. Myles Benning came from the Naval Academy, which I know is not the same, but it is a military school with a similar type of student-athlete. Myles has spoken to our team about what they are like, off the field, on the field, and our guys have played them last year. They understand the incredible amount of discipline and how hard those guys play. That helps me because I don't have to do all of the teaching because our players have experienced it."
On field goal attempts with back-to-back false starts …
"A lot of people are starting to get a pretty good read on our snap count, so we are trying to get honestly too tricky on our snap counts to try to get the defense offsides. They are getting closer and closer. People want to come after our field goal team. They have a nice little streak going there, so the other teams are really trying to coach up their teams to be the ones that stop that. We are trying to counter that with some snap count variations and some different timing. We ended up tricking ourselves, which happens quite a bit in football, believe it or not. We overthink stuff when we are in this office for too long. My players overcame, thank goodness. Coach Traylor was trying to be too cute."
On self-inflicted wounds on offense …
"We were way better. We cut down our MAs (missed assignments) in half from the week before at UAB. Did we have some mistakes? Yes sir, we did, but that is what I love about my guys. Our goal is to play our best. Our best is good enough. Until we do that, you are not going to hear us get on here, and I hope for the day I get on here and go, 'Man, we just played our very best. That is as good as we can be right there.' We are getting closer. We had nine penalties in the game. Six were pre-snap, so we are really clean during the whistle, but those other six we have got to stop. We had two on special teams, two on offense and two on defense. Two of those were coaching errors, trying to mix personnel, and we just didn't do it fast enough. I will own all of them, they are all a reflection on me, but we have got to get that cleaned up."
