Rich Rodriguez Kansas Preview

Rich, so after watching film, I'm sure there were plenty of good points, too. So give me some of the things that you saw that you liked and obviously, unfortunately, some of the things you didn't. Yeah, the opening date, I thought our guys were pretty focused, dialed in offensively, especially in the first three quarters, played really well and didn't play well in the fourth quarter. But we're executing. Making some big plays against some pretty talented guys. You know, defensively, unfortunately, it's the same story as a lot of games. It's just they did not play well in the first half at all. It was just really bad. Played better in the second half, though. Kind of came back a little bit in the second half, played a little better football, and gave us a chance. But there's still so much that we've got to learn from this deal. You know, kind of went toe-to-toe with one of the better teams in the league at their place in a tough environment. Had opportunities to win a game, but we didn't finish it. Learn what we can do to get better for it. Some of the issues that we're having, whether it's defense, whatever, it's my job as a head coach to first identify it and then try to get it fixed. And some of it I think we'll try to get fixed and how, of course, but some of it may take a little more time. Defensive improvements in the second half, are there things that you carry forward? Did you see some things that – Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's just been really frustrating for everybody involved. I mean, it's been frustrating for the defensive coaches and the players I didn't particularly like our demeanor on the sidelines at the end of the first half or in the locker room. Our defensive guys just looked kind of dejected, which you can almost understand. You're playing awful, but you've got to fight through that. That's something that at halftime I addressed it. I said, listen, let's have a little energy. You could hang your head down. We can play better than that, and we're going to need to. You've got to give them some credit, too. I mean, Costanzo, I thought, played a brilliant game. And they made some contested catches, but, you know, some of the issues we've had all year continue to show up. And that's really frustrating for everybody. And, you know, like I said, it's my job to try to help get it fixed as quick as we can. How are you? Makes sense of it, I guess, when you could argue the defense won the game against TCU, so that's the potential that it could be better with the same roster, and then you turn around and it's the exact opposite again. Yeah, isn't it frustrating? It is. We did play better against TCU and made the play at the end to win, but we still didn't play well. I don't know how many yards, some yards, and so we haven't really played well defensively. For the whole game at any game and then offensively, I don't know if we've played all four quarters, but we've played some really good football and what the numbers were in the first half. It was pretty amazing. It's a pretty quality group of players that our offense did. But and we go against each other a lot in practice. And, you know, there are defenses. It's got we got some players there. And it's not I'm not here to say that everything's going to be solved with a snap of the finger. The first thing you got to do is that you got to admit. You know, where your issues are, right? And then you've got to work to correct them. And if you can correct them right now, obviously we're trying to do that. If you've got to correct it later, which I'm aware of, I'll do that as well. How do you juggle things around on your offensive line with Grayson out now? Yeah, Bubba was kind of the leader. Even though he wasn't with us last year, he'd been in the system before. And he'd been with Coach Trickett. So, you know, at least we've been far enough into the season that our guys know the routine. having Nick Cray, who can play really every position on the O-line guard to tackle, sliding him over there, is the first plan with that. you And that's where we were at, I think, I don't know for when Bubba got hurt, like the third quarter? having First half, was it? Yeah. So, you know, in the third quarter, we played pretty well offensively. The last couple drives were just, I mean, they were three and outs, but it wasn't good. me. But I feel comfortable with Nick and Josh in there. Nick initially came in and subbed for Bubba at right guard. Halftime you flipped him, and Josh, was there a reason behind that? No, Coach Trickett kind of has a rotation where they practice that. I think all the tackles can play right and left, all the guards can play right and left, and it's usually Coach Trickett's got a feel for which ones they're more comfortable with against who we're playing against. And then number 10, A.J. Holmes can make anybody struggle at times, But they did a good job against them. For a large part of the game, but there's times at the end of the game, too, where he showed why he's a first-round pick, too. So they had some pretty good guys up front. You look at Kansas, they don't look like a 3-16, but they had a lot of close losses. Yeah, their record should be flipped without question. I mean, you talk about close, close. I mean, on last play of the game kind of stuff. I noticed them when I was – I don't know who we were playing that they had played. I watched them on film, and I remember telling myself, man, they're really athletic. And defense, I was watching more defense than offense. Their defense has athletes everywhere. I mean, they've got all three levels. They've got some really good players. And they've been in a whole bunch of close games, kind of like us. But they've got a lot of respect for what their staff has put together. I mean, they crushed us last year and all that. But we've got to have a good week. We've got to learn from this past game as best we can. It might be a little chilly, maybe a little snow on the ground on Saturday and get ready to play. You talked openly last week about player retention and where are any of those conversations at, any updates? Yeah, I don't know. You know, like I understand why there's a lot of programs that are going to wait until the end of the regular season. But because the signing date is the following week and then the month after that is a portal and everything happens so quickly that, you know, we're trying to get some of that done, you know, particularly with the personnel staff that we have. And there's a couple. There's been a few. I don't know if they've signed yet to a contract for next year, so I don't want to release any names until we get a majority of them. You know, I know there's a lot of interest in it, which is good, and it's, you know, it's not a lot of time you can deal with, but I addressed it with the team, too. I said, you know, we have kind of two slogans that we kind of go by, hard edge, you know, which is being mentally, physically tough, and then earn success, and if you earn success, Obviously, you have. You know, more years to play. We're obviously going to try to do what we can to retain you. If you haven't earned success, but we think you have the capability to do it, we're going to try to get you back. But, you know, I don't want to, you know, everybody said when the market's changed, you still don't want to reward somebody if they haven't earned success yet just because the market says they're supposed to be getting paid that. I think you have to earn that part of it. And so we're having those discussions every day with the staff. And then discussions with some of the players are going on, too, as we speak. Rich, you talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago, but college football playoff expansion is now official. Yeah. What are your thoughts of that? Yeah, I don't know. One way, you know, we had no vote in it, so it's like, you know, I had no control over the situation. It's like, okay, just tell me what the rules are, right? But, you know, I think it'll – it's a big – I hope that brings more revenue for the school. I know it's a billion-dollar-something deal, so maybe we'll get some more money from ESPN. That would be a good thing. But I think it's, you know, the conference championship games, I always thought that was always a great thing for college football. You know, I hadn't been in a couple of them. And those were, you know, to me, part of the tough deal. Like, that's gone away, I guess, the championship games and the conference. And I thought your first goal every year is to win your conference. And so now I guess you just do it in the regular season. But you're probably going to have some co-champions or something, too. But anyway, I mean, I think it's... I know it's going to go there, and it'll be more access to getting in the playoff, which is probably a good thing. I still think, and I'm giving my opinion, everybody should come in together and hold hands and sing kumbaya and have one big league and do it by region so our fans can drive to the away games. There's a lot of interest in it. Wouldn't that be remarkable? If we had, like the NFL, it was one big league. The teams in your division were somewhat close within three or four hours of your campus, so you're not getting home at 7 in the morning after a game. You know? That would be like the fans could come to the away games. But that would take a lot of people to give up something and kind of acquiesce, that's a big word, to each other's problems and issues and come together for the betterment of the game. I think that's going to happen. How did you do your Sunday with you getting in so late? Yeah, it's like 7 o'clock. I got, it was about 7.15 a.m. We got pulled in here, went home, got, I was still mad. So I think I maybe got two hours of sleep. It was hard to sleep when you're mad. And then came back here in the office about 11. And then we don't practice on Sunday, but we had our normal staff meeting at 1 o'clock, watched the film, team meeting at 4, did our walkthroughs and meetings. So I'm still trying to catch up on those. I didn't sleep on, like, I seen a lot of guys on the plane ride or the bus ride back, guys probably got an hour or two sleep, but I was so mad, and I probably kept people up because I have a tendency to talk loud while I'm watching film, and so I should be better at that, but the plane was really quiet other than my loud mouth watching film, so that was very considerate of me watching the film on the way home. As part of the CFP, you guys added Purdue for next year. Just your thoughts on that addition. Yeah, I think when everybody's playing 10 power conference games, it makes sense. You don't want some teams playing 9 or 8 and others. So having 10 every year, which is usually what we're accustomed to anyway. I think next year we weren't scheduled to do it, but now we are. And I like the inter-conference games anyway. Anyway, I think that's kind of fun for the... I mentioned their defense, I guess secondary is one of the strengths of their team. What do you see back there? Yeah, really athletic, got great size. I mean, they're all, you know, they got six foot one, six, two, six, three guys back there, very active. You know, they don't play a lot of zero man, but they'll play a lot of man and challenge you a little bit. Their two ends are as good as we've seen, really good. So I've been really impressed with what I've seen on film. And I said, every game they've played, they've done a good job against us. And then offensively, Edwards and Marshall, what do you see there? Yeah, here we go. We've got an athletic quarterback and a really good running back that can run. And, you know, we've had so many issues and problems. And Castellanos, like I said in the last game, is a good player. But we've had, unfortunately, a tendency to make the other quarterback look really, really good. And we've got to get better at that. Yeah, I think I've got it. I've got to do a better job of trying to do whatever I can to help our defensive coaches out, and our defensive coaches have got to do a better job of helping our players out. And then overall, we just – I've never been through something like this where it's been that consistently troublesome throughout the entire season. Like I said, I'm not sticking my head in the sand. I know most issues. I'm not going to say them to you all publicly, Even though I know you might want to know. I don't know what it is, but I have a pretty good grasp. Richie, you talked about after the game. I know it was high emotions on the postgame presser, but it's different aspects for the defense that maybe you practiced more that weren't practiced enough. You kind of made a comment like that. Well, yeah, I was just in reference like something that without watching. When you watch a film, you really get clarity on exactly what you need to do. But, I mean, the captain obviousness here is that, you know, we've been very poor at playing the deep ball. Like, the team just threw it up. You know, in the other games, we weren't even in position to make a play. In this game, we were there sometimes in position to make the play on the deep ball. But they outworked us, or whatever they did, they made the catch, and we didn't. And a lot of times, in practice, you don't work the deep ball. Now, sometimes you don't have enough room, or you just don't, you know, Your quarterback, scout quarterback, doesn't throw it deep enough for you. Whatever the case may be is that we've had problems with the deep ball, and so we've got to work on our work. We've done it some, but obviously haven't done it enough. We've got to do a better job of playing the deep ball in the air with our secondary guys, and we're going to work on that every day. What changed in the third quarter, though, for the defense? Why did it perform so well for them? Well, they got a little bit of confidence, got a couple stops, And then the offense was just. Had the ball. I think two long drives, I don't know, I think there were two long drives and then there was a short drive after the punt return, but there were two long drives too, so it kind of, you know, we had the ball most of the quarter, but the defense had a couple nice stops and got some confidence there. But you've had a couple of different receivers have big games individually, but like separate from one another. And I just wonder, like, is the offense up in such a way where that's going to happen? Like every now and then someone will get four or five? And is there a way to make it two or three people that do that? Well, it's helpful. There's more guys that have not probably caught a lot of catches and you're probably not always aware of that have slowly started to learn. stuff in practice. Like we'd seen Teron Francis make a step in the last two or three weeks practice-wise. So Coach Garrett felt more confident putting him in there throughout the game because of what he's seen in practice. The same with Keon Hutchins. Those are two new guys and I don't want to say they're finally getting it, but we're getting more confident that they're ready to play in a bigger role. The guys that started at the beginning of the season. So Teron made some big plays, and Keon and I guess Cable are making some big plays too. So that room's been pretty solid for us. Because you all run the ball so often and so well, it seems like obviously the pass openings are going to be there for guys too. With a couple of guys coming along, does it set up the final couple games where you might have some good passing days if they go overboard trying to stop you on the run? Yeah, I think any time you can run, then play action is good. And we hit a couple of, I don't know, three or four of those. Play actions were big, and Mike can make all the throws. Our guys are understanding. But I think they're slowly understanding why we start to call something. But as I told the coaches, the offensive coaches this morning in our meetings, that I don't want to just run plays and not know why we're calling certain plays. I want every coach especially, and the players should do, is understand why we're calling what we're calling and what the adjustment or what the next call could potentially be. That's when you really know the offense. are performing pretty well, but I don't know if they know the whys yet. And, you know, that sometimes takes a couple years, but we're trying to force-feed our guys to know the why. And the same thing is true on both sides of the ball. I mean, I want the players not to just know what to do, but why you're doing it. And, you know, that's a process that you try to accelerate. Now you have to accelerate because so much roster turnover every year. You haven't had that many pre-snap penalties on the offense this year, but you had a bunch. Yeah, a little bit of crowd noise there, and then some of it was some hesitation, and we were changing the call, and Wes didn't hear it. And so those are really frustrating. We shouldn't have that. I don't care where we're playing at. Those have to be totally eliminated. Coach, going back to Kansas, they have Leroy Harris, one of the guys who's had the most pressures this season. What have you seen from him on? Yeah, really athletic. I mean, this guy's an NFL guy. I mean, he's big, got long arms, really aggressive, got a great get-off. I mean, he's a problem. I mean, he's a guy that's made a lot of plays for him, and I've been really impressed with him. He's kind of stood out. I remember when I first watched him, I was like, God, they've got some athletes, and he's had a really good year for them.