|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCESeptember 1, 2015Kyle FloodPiscataway, New Jersey COACH FLOOD: Welcome back. It's exciting to finally begin our 2015 season, the first of 12 games in 13 weeks. My first opportunity to open a season in High Points Solution Stadium, that's exciting for me personally. And we expect a very challenging football game from a good football team, a team that played really good defense last year, a team with a new head coach, in Latrell Scott, who has had a lot of success at his previous stops going 25-9. Coach Scott is somebody that I'm familiar with professionally. I know we've spoken in the past, he's worked for a gentleman I have a lot of respect for by the name of Dave Clawson. And I know he went from Richmond to Tennessee with Coach Clawson; was the only coach on the staff I believe that made that trip with Dave, and an excellent offensive football coach. And they have got a defensive front coordinator who we have a mutual acquaintance with in that he played professional football for the Jets, a gentleman by the name of Joe Gardi, who the gentleman who gave me my first full-time coaching job back at Hofstra in 1997. Those things are exciting. Like I said, we are expecting a challenging football game. I know the team is really excited about getting into the stadium. I have one depth chart update I can give you on the front end. We have updated medical information on Dre Boggs, so he will be able to play this week and he will be the starter. And you probably should add in Jarius Adams in that depth behind him, as well, because Ruhann won't be available for the first half. Q. Do you believe you'll be the one leading the team out of the tunnel on Saturday and do you have any contingency plans in that's not the case? COACH FLOOD: I have no reason to believe I wouldn't be the person leading the football team on Saturday. My portion of the university process ended yesterday, and now until there's a resolution, I really need to be respectful of that process and I won't have I in further comment on that. Q. I was going to ask that, if you talked to the university and what your part of the university entailed, who you met with, that kind of thing? COACH FLOOD: I spoke to representatives from the university. I think if the university wants to disclose who that is, I think that would be their prerogative, that shouldn't be me. Q. Did they give you any indication of timeline on this, resolution? COACH FLOOD: No. Q. Do you have an update an Nadir's status? COACH FLOOD: I have not gotten any update on the team's eligibility for the first game. That's usually a compliance report I'll receive one to two days before the game. Q. Do you hope this is done this week? Do you expect it will be done before this game? COACH FLOOD: I try not to put expectations on it. It's a university process. I want to be completely respectful to that process. I'm sure that as soon as it is concluded that they will make me aware of it. Q. Can you talk about the maturation of Blessuan Austin and how far he's come as a true freshman? COACH FLOOD: We are excited about him. This is a big challenge for him. There's an evolution of a football player that happens, and fortunately we had him here in January, so he was able to start that a little bit earlier than some of the other first-year players. Bless was somebody that we recognized right away, was a player with a lot of talent, and then it was just a matter of how quickly did we think he could fit into the system. I think he's done a good job. Now I'm anxious to see a lot of the things I've seen in practice. I want to see those things materialize in a game against another opponent on a big stage, and this Saturday is going to be a great first test. Q. Do you have a sense of how Hayden is going to react to first start. He hasn't played in more than two years; right? COACH FLOOD: It's one of the difficult things for a player who transfers at that early stage. You spend a year on a scout team at one place, and then you go to another place and you are still ineligible. So you have to spend another year on the scout team. Hayden is really excited. He's working really hard and I have a lot of confidence in him and so does the football team. Q. Darius is on the injury report. Do you have any timetable for when you expect him to be back, what kind of -- what's his availability like early in the season? COACH FLOOD: It would be hard for me to put a timetable on it. I just said on the Big Ten call, which I'm a little disappointed you guys didn't call in, that he's week-to-week right now. I'm confident that we are going to see Darius Hamilton on the field on game day this year but it will be really hard for me to put a timetable on it. Q. What's your plan for the quarterback in the opener and how do you go about making that decision? COACH FLOOD: Hayden Rettig is the starting quarterback. We're going to evaluate the first half and we'll make a decision at half-time as to how we're going to proceed. Q. Can you talk about positive by playing seven, eight offensive linemen, will this be the first game that you can possibly do that? Would you like to do it from the outset? COACH FLOOD: I do, and I think we'll play more than five. Although I will say this: I feel like we have five starters. I feel like Dorian Miller has established himself as a starter. I think J.J. Denman has established himself as a starter. But I saw the value in the playing time J.J. got last year, even though Tajh was the starter and how that developed him through the year. And he was able to be there when we needed him; and in much less of a role; the advantage that was for Derrick Nelson to take all those reps in practice to get him ready because I think he's played well this preseason, also. I would like to have a rotation, but I do feel like we have five starters. Q. You indicated during the summer you would like to give your quarterbacks a long leash, whoever wins the job. Have you changed that stance, or is it a week-one decision on your quarterbacks? COACH FLOOD: The situation is a little different than when I made that statement. So I think as situations change, the evaluation process changes. And now Hayden is going to have a phenomenal opportunity to be evaluated in a life game situation and I think that will go a long way in determining how we go forward. Q. Are you now more open, too, to not even just Norfolk State, but maybe early in the season playing both guys and letting the competition go a little longer? COACH FLOOD: I really haven't looked past the first half of this game. We are going to evaluate the first half of this game and then make our decisions going forward based on that; to look beyond that I think would be very difficult. Q. How excited are you to see Paul James on the field this Saturday? COACH FLOOD: I feel better when I see Paul James on the practice field, and when I see him on game day, my level of excitement even rises further. He is one of a very talented group of running backs, and we are going to have a way for all those guys to impact the game. I would imagine Paul James would go out there for the first play, so that will make him the starter on paper. I know everybody gets excited about that. But I don't see it that way. I believe Josh Hicks is the starter; Robert Martin is a starter, Justin Goodwin is a starter. We are very fortunate, the four running backs we have available right now have all won football games for us and been impactful for our program. Q. After P.J. gets that first rep, how do you see the running back situation working out? Is it a hot-hand scenario? Do you design certain drives for certain guys what's the plan there? COACH FLOOD: I wouldn't want to divulge that now. I think you guys will see it and we'll have a plan before Saturday. Q. At the middle linebacker position, is Isaiah Johnson going to get some reps, or is it strictly Kaiwan Lewis? COACH FLOOD: I believe Isaiah will play. Some will depend on the package that we use in any particular game. Similar to what I said about the offensive line, I feel like can a want has established himself as a starter. Q. Back to the quarterbacks. You obviously have a strict plan for what you do on a normal game week in terms of how many reps the starter gets, how many reps the backup gets. Is it different this week since obviously there's different circumstances, will you split the reps differently than usual? COACH FLOOD: Hayden is getting more reps right now in practice than Chris has, but they both are taking reps. Q. Shaun O'Hara was very outspoken in a Tweet supporting you threw this and he also called out the administration for not being more vocal in their support for you. Would you have liked to have heard more from them at this point? COACH FLOOD: I don't really want to comment on that part of it. I appreciate the fact that Shaun was supportive, and the people that I've been able to build relationships with, you know, in New Jersey at Rutgers over the last ten years have been extremely supportive of me and that makes me feel good, because those are the people who really know me. Q. Without going into specifics, which I respect you don't want to do, but just given that there is an investigation that you did have to deal with some stuff with your players, suspensions, has it really been possible for this camp to have felt normal, or have you had to work hard to keep it, you know, focused, I guess is the word, or just feeling like you're able to get your things done? COACH FLOOD: My experience with these situation s is they generally go one way or the other. They either become a distraction or they serve to really focus the football team. I have sensed that our football team is very focused, and I have a couple ways of judging that in terms of how we operate in the weight room, what the weights look like, how guys are handling their health and how we practice, which I was very pleased with how we practiced yesterday. Those are things that tell me that we have a really focused football team, and I'm very proud of them to do that. Because it's not easy, you're right about that. It's not easy to do that. But I think the leadership on this team made a concerted effort that we need to take whatever is externally -- could be an issue for us as a program and block it out and get ready to be 1-0 this week against a good football team. Q. What about you personally, not just for you team, but for you -- COACH FLOOD: No, that's my job. My job is to coach this football team. My job is to get here every day and be focused on exactly what we are doing that day and making sure we are moving in the right direction. Q. You have Lambert listed as a starter at end. Do you still plan to see him moved inside at all and can you tell me about how much Turay is expected to play on a game-in, game-out basis? COACH FLOOD: We expect Kemoko to play to answer the second part of it. How much he will play I think will vary. He's not completely -- he's not 100 percent healthy right now, so that will have some impact on it, as well. Quanzell is somebody who has given us tremendous flexibility up front, both in the past and this preseason. We feel like this is the place he can impact the game the best for us, at that R position, and he'll play quite a bit. But Quanzell is also somebody who plays in a lot of different places, on our sub packages on third down. He's a guy that plays outside; he can play inside; he can stand up. He's a very versatile player. Q. Can you talk about the experience -- COACH FLOOD: Transfer from FAU. They have got one receiver that returns with significant statistics and they have another receiver who transferred in from Syracuse. He has got some weapons, and he's a talented football player, now in a new system being coached by Latrell Scott, who is a very, very, very bright football coach. There's a lot of unknowns in this game. We turn on the film from Virginia State and we see kind of a spread, gun-run offense. But I know the kind of offense that they ran at Tennessee and I know the kind of offense that they ran at Richmond with Dave Clawson, and that was a little bit more of a pro-style, two back, you could call it a West Coast offense if you wanted to in terms of terminology. But those are things that are all part of a first game with a new staff. It's a challenge to our players because you have to really be ready to allow your rules to hold up because although we are going to prepare them for everything we know about, ultimately those coaches can really do whatever they want to on game day. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|