University of Houston Athletics
Cougar Football Weekly Press Conference
10/19/2010 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 19, 2010
HOUSTON -
Head Coach Kevin Sumlin
On handling his team's confidence level
"Hopefully, we will never be in the situation (where we lack confidence). When you watch video, you have to look where you can get better and where you made mistakes. (We have to) look and consider the positives that come out of it. If we do this, this and this will the outcome be different? As long as guys can see that and see where they can improve, I think we are okay. That starts with me, with the coaches. Believe it or not, players bounce back a lot quicker than coaches or fans--a lot quicker, whether it's a win or a loss. It's been my experience that you be honest with your team and help them see that they can change some things or do things a little bit better, and that's where we are. Yesterday, we talked about the game last week. After practice was over, we were moving on - it's time to move on to SMU. Nobody feels good about last weekend. Nobody is happy about that, but we can't just lay around and whine. That's not our attitude, that's never been out attitude and never will be."
On having defensive problems, including tackling
"I would say there are other issues. Whenever you lose football games, it's just not one thing."
On some defensive corrections and adjustments being easier to correct than others
"Obviously, we lost a player (when going live in practice). All we can do is try to get better. Believe me, we're working on it--and we have worked on it. One of the comments we got was that we did tackle a lot (when I first got here) and people were shocked to see that during practice. The fundamentals are being taught, but just like a lot of things, it doesn't look like it. Executing, that's something different."
On SMU running the ball more this year than last year
"I wouldn't say (they are running the ball more). I'd say you have the two best rushers in the league and two passing teams. You can make your own assumptions from that. "
On SMU's strengths
"I see an experienced quarterback (Kyle Padron) that's thrown 1,000 yards in the past two weeks. I see the other leading rusher (Zach Line) in the league besides Bryce Beall. I see one of the leading tacklers in the country (Ja'Gared Davis). Davis is having a heck of a year in terms of tackles and sacks. I see a big guy (Margus Hunt) that has blocked probably six or seven kicks this year and a future NFL kicker (Matt Szymanski) that I've known since he was a little kid. They're a couple of years into their system with experienced players and they've improved somewhat defensively. Kyle has continued to get better. Actually, the first time he played was against us last year. Over the offseason, he's been surrounded by talent and it's given him a chance to get better. He's one of the faster guys in our league and their identity is really who they are. They've been a run-and-shoot team, and they look a little like us. It surprises people that the two leading rushers in the league are on our teams."
On (SMU linebacker Ja'Gared) Davis moving around frequently
"They're a 3-4 team and they move around. They kind of bounce around a little bit and create some situations that make it possible for him to be an inch guy. It's very similar to the way that we lost week."
On the progress of Quarterback David Piland
"I don't know if you can develop a guy in two weeks. He's getting better. Over the course of the last few weeks, I've seen certain situations arise and how he's improved in handling them mechanically, with pace of play, direction, attitude and communicating during the game what's going on. He has continued to improve."
On throwing downfield more recently
"That's a misconception. If you look back at the beginning of the year and the first couple of games, we probably had our longest touchdown passes since I've been here. I don't think it's a quarterback situation; it's been going on since the first game of the year. I don't know that it's a point of emphasis, it's something that we need to do to take advantage of some of the flat-front contour defenses that we see that are designed to stop the short passing game and crowd the line of scrimmage. We're able to relieve some of that pressure or change the contour of the defense. "
On Bryce Beall's success vs. Rice
"He can't do it by himself. Obviously, someone has to block for him and Mike Hayes did an excellent job in the backfield with him. There were two-back sets and he did a great job in the second quarter. There was one point when we had the ball for three minutes and scored. That's amazing. Certainly, there are guys on this team that have to fill that (leadership) void, we've talked about that before. No one guy is going to do that, it's going to take several people to step up and take the leadership role. That's something that quite frankly we're struggling with.
When you come into a season and have leaders, there's a pecking order of how things go in any organization. It takes some time for a guy to step outside of his comfort zone and say `you know what, I'll lead now.' That seems like an easy thing to do, but personality-wise and player-wise, sometimes that just doesn't happen overnight. As coaches, we have to assume that role until we can find someone or a number of guys that say `I'll lead from here on out.' It's a whole lot easier to do in off-season than it is while you're preparing for a game, but that's what we're trying to do."
