University of Houston Athletics
Houston at UConn: Press Conference
10/14/2019 12:05:00 PM | Football
HOUSTON FOOTBALL
Monday, October 14, 2019 • Houston
Carl Lewis Auditorium • Athletics/Alumni Center
HEAD COACH DANA HOLGORSEN
On moving forward…
"That's something that we have to work on every week. This upcoming week is no different. It doesn't matter who we play or where we play. That's not the main focus right now. In situations like this our focus isn't on our opponent. I'm not just talking about UConn, I'm talking about every single team that we face. We're at a point with this football team and this program where we have to just put our head down and ignore the outside noise. We're trying to do a better job as coaches and as players to try to improve. That's where we're at."
On what needs to improve…
"There's too much to talk about. What I have liked is that our guys have remained competitive. We're not taking bad losses. We're not going out there and doing really bad things. I think we're improving. We did take a step back from where we were offensively against North Texas.
Having some injuries up front when you're going against a really good front is difficult. The best thing that Cincinnati does is their front. Their front six guys are strong, and they're as good a front that we'll see all year. We didn't do a great job of handling that and we kind of knew that going into it. We knew that we'd have to 'max protect' a lot. The one time that we didn't max protect, [Clayton] Tune had five people on him immediately. I wasn't going to sit back there and let people tee-off on him, so we had to adjust. We were a little handicapped with it, but that won't be the case every week.
Receiver-wise, we made some improvements. I've been happy with what we're doing at running back. Defensively, there is definitely some room for improvement. Your opponent always has something to do with how you play. We got exposed to that a little bit. We have to keep working and we'll keep improving."
On punt team…
"Punt team was spectacular. We punted a little bit earlier, a couple of times I wish we wouldn't have turned the ball over so we could've just put the punt team out there. We're doing a nice job with it. Dane [Roy] is a talented young man. Although we don't like punting very much, when you can flip the field like that it helps your football team. It has been good to see and that helps our defense by pinning people back as well. It's a weapon, our kickoff and kickoff return team got exposed, we don't like what we saw out of that. Didn't get anything out of the punt return team, but we didn't screw anything up as well."
On carrying on momentum…
"The season is half over, we have a lot of football left. This week is an opportunity for us to do some things better, and we need to do some things better. Like I said, it doesn't matter who we play. We have plenty of good quality teams left on our schedule, this is one of them. It is going to be a long trip, we have to go up there and we have to show some improvement. Hopefully we have a better week."
On Bryson Smith…
"We've shown to have the ability to run the football well and making sure the defense has to account for the quarterback has been beneficial for us in the running game. Obviously, D'Eriq King was really good at it and Clayton Tune showed the one game he was healthy that you better account for him too. You could see when Clayton broke the pocket, he wasn't running very well. Once he gets back, they're going to have to account for him in the pocket. In the meantime, we're going to do some things with Bryson Smith because he's natural at it. He can throw the football, so they have to account for it, but him playing quarterback and going through reads is not something we're going to do. Putting him back there and making sure the defense accounts for him is something we are going to do."
On playing multiple quarterbacks…
"Someone has to communicate the calls and you can say, 'What's so hard about communicating a call?', but let me tell you, it's hard. Getting the signals and reading them off is something you have to do, and I'd never put Bryson or any of the running backs in the situation where they would have to do that. Logan [Holgorsen] has had eight months of practice and has been listening to what I say for 19 years so he understands how to communicate things. I thought he did a great job for two weeks that we had going out there and running our offense and getting us ready to play. What that said as a freshman is that he isn't ready to play a lot, but he can communicate and get things going."
On Isaiah Chambers…
"He is not a starter for us at this point. He needs to keep improving."
On the scout team…
"Even without guys like D'Eriq King and without the five or six guys on defense that are sitting one of the things that I think we do well is the focus that we put on scout teams. Those guys are treated like a separate unit. They meet with the young coaches, the watch videos, they go outside, they walk though things and they take a lot of pride in giving the offense, defense and the special teams as well good looks. We focus on that, we watch that, we praise that, we show good stuff, we show bad stuff. The better the players are the more competitive the practices the better we are going to get. Right now, our scout teams are functioning at a very high level because of the amount of players that we have that are able to do it. We focus on it and we coach that thing hard too, so we are getting a lot of good looks with a lot of good players that will be playing with us in the future. Those guys do a good job on scout team and they have a chance to move up as well. We have a couple of those guys that have started traveling. Some of them are redshirts that are eligible that are going to be able to get some snaps here towards the end of the year."
On Clayton Tune…
"It's going to be maintenance. Hamstrings don't just wake up in the morning 100%. I thought he managed it really well, he was smart with it. Everything we did was try to keep him in the pocket and hopefully he is a week better and we can get him back to normal. He is a much better player when he can use his legs so hopefully this week he will be back to 100%. We will practice him this afternoon and see what he looks like."
