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TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 21, 2015

Eric Morris

Lubbock, Texas

Q. I'm guessing on the team's touchdown pass that Devon isn't going to be playing much left tackle, is he?
COACH MORRIS: No, no, we ran that play against him last year, the exact same play. Jakeem just ran it, and we ran it twice against them. Same play we scored on the first touchdown of the year. So they'd seen it a couple times and thought we could get them to drive out there.

Jakeem threw a great ball, didn't he? Nice, tight spiral and on the money. So pretty fun. He's about 50% in practice last week. It was pretty exciting when he hit it.

Q. Did he throw at all in pregame or anything that was called?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, we have him warm up on the sidelines with the quarterbacks in between drives a couple times. Just nonchalant over there. Him and Davis would alternate who was throwing it back to Pat to try to make it look not very obvious.

Q. What's the plan for Saturday?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, just keep executing. We're going to have to put a lot of plays together. Our drives have been pretty efficient. I think we only had nine drives last week which is crazy, 58 plays or something. We're extremely efficient. I think we average almost nine yards a play, and that's with that long drive we had there at the end.

I think we got the ball back with 8 minutes. That was the biggest drive of the game, in my opinion. That's something that we've struggled with in the past is kind of being able to run it, milk a little clock. So we're a little unorthodox in what we did. We ran some speed sweeps and stuff. We didn't think we could lineup and get in big sets and play power football with them. Kind of use our strengths to our advantage. We got that challenge, which was huge, in my opinion. Won us the game there at the end. It allowed us to get three or four more minutes off the clock.

So proud of the way they finished. We had a lot of just routine plays that we made over and over, which we're going to have to do the same thing this week.

Q. I guess how much more comfortable is that when you get 85 or 90 after the first week?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, I think it could be good and it could be bad too. It could go both ways. We just have to not squander any opportunities we get. We have to take every one of them seriously. We scored on five of the nine with a missed field goal. If we're trying to run plays down there, you feel good about 6 of the 9 drives we had. Only one three-and-out. Didn't punt the whole entire game, which is good. Some of those interceptions were equivalent to punts.

But happy the way the guys competed. I thought we blocked on the perimeter better than we have since we've been here. Guys are kind of starting to play for each other, which is really good to see.

Q. Speaking of, how good was it to see (No microphone) have a day like he had last Saturday?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, lot of fun. He's kind of been up and down ever since the Holiday Bowl, and had a great Holiday Bowl. Everybody expected huge things from him. Had a good off-season, and then not as big a year last year as what we wanted. First couple games, same thing. Up and down, he's made some big plays. He had a couple things here and there he wished he could have back.

But really proud of him. Did a good job. He played really strong. We wanted to get the ball quick to him. We thought we had a match-up with some of their corners letting him go one-on-one. We didn't block him three or four times. And said hey, let that one-on-one match-up. We thought we played him strong. We challenged him all week and he stepped up to it and did really well.

Q. You became a dad last week?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, it was a great week for me. I missed Tuesday practice. Tried to plan it where I could make it, but happened to take a little bit longer, so missed Tuesday practice. The kids were excited. So didn't get much sleep last week. I stayed the week before and tried to game plan a week in advance. But it's been a lot of fun. It was a great week. One I'll remember forever.

Q. Through this third game you guys kept making huge plays on third down. Is that something that's intangible with your quarterbacks? Is that something you can coach? How do you get the results you've had?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, I mean, part of it is just game planning your third down calls and then half of it's being able to have the moxie to make plays. There are two third-and-longs he scrambles around and makes plays. So without him we don't get those.

But we were really good on 3rd and medium, and really good on 3rd and short. I think we were 70% overall in the game, third-down conversion. So if you can keep that high, it keeps you on the field and extends those drives, which is big. So I'd say it's a combination of guys being older, being in the right place, right time. Quarterback making good reads and a couple of those are just him getting out of the pocket and being a football player.

Q. The third down conversions there, the 3rd and 1 on the first drive where Justin goes for 19 yards. You have Pearson and Castaneda to tie in, and they also win the pass touchdown run. How does that look? Is that working out for you?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, good. We don't really have a tight end right now. Robert's an athletic guy that has good feet and can help us in some of the run game stuff. It just kind of gives us a different formation to make people kind of worry about.

Pearson's done a great job with it. He's an athletic guy that you can block with or slip him out and do some things with him there. So, yeah, we'll continue to add some wrinkles in the game plan, both run game and pass game with those guys in there.

Q. The third series with DeAndre went for 38 yards. Had a really good block by Keke it looked like.
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, both the guys did a great job. Like I said, the whole game it's over and over. We had more knockdowns than we have in three years since we've been here just as a combined outside and inside receivers, which was great to see.

So the play was made by Pat. Pat checked that. That wasn't called. He checked at the line of scrimmage. We knew if we got that look, that's what we wanted to get to all week. So great job by him seeing it and getting us to the play we needed. Everybody else just did their job. Nothing special. We cut a couple guys on the perimeter, but that's what they should do.

Q. (No microphone)?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, double eagle, if you want to put it (laughing).

Q. Talk about the 18 points that TCU scored last year, but on the other side of that, the Tech offense only scored 27 last year. How do you improve that against this TCU defense?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, we're not going to talk about that. We're done talking about last year. These kids are motivated right now. There doesn't need to be anything said. This is a great football team we're playing. They've got a couple guys down on defense, but Gary's probably the best defensive mind in the whole entire nation.

When these guys were on film last week in the right spot at the right time, gap sound football. They trigger on things, and they're a swarming defense. So we have our hands full. The one thing we've been doing these past couple weeks is I thought our preparation has been better throughout the week. You can see guys working through practice and playing really hard on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and it's carrying over for us right now.

So we've just got to keep our head down and keep worrying about what our individual jobs are. The kids are doing a great job at communicating on the field and getting their jobs done, and that puts together a good product out there. I don't think these kids need anymore motivation. I think Jones Stadium will be as loud as it's been in seven or eight years for this game. So I think they'll be balling naturally.

Q. Talk about the offenses ability throughout the year but particularly in the first half, the game on Saturday, they get the lead and then the other team comes back to tie or cut into that lead, they just go right back out and kind of get the team the lead back?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, we talked about that as a group. We try not to worry about what's going on the other two phases, which is special teams and defense. Just try to stay focused on our job throughout the whole entire game. We've done a better job of getting them together on the sideline and not letting them get distracted by anything.

We talk about our adjustments during the game. Me and Coach Jinks will be on the headset with some of our guys and coaches, and we're making adjustments in the game as opposed to sitting over there and watching.

Now, same time we want to cheer on our teammates, but we don't want to have any kind of distraction during the game. I thought the second half was more impressive than the first half with us coming out. It's 21-21 that first drive. We take it down and marked it down and scored. That was a big step for us as a program, I thought.

Q. Can you talk about just the overall team speed of your receivers and the advantage that gives you? Does that surprise people when they see it?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, and it's everybody we had last year. The biggest thing I think that speed was there last year. I just think those kids are a year older and playing that much faster right now. They're where they need to be, and all four guys that you lineup to start with have played a lot of football in this offense.

So I think that's part of it. Another part of it is just them being comfortable with the calls now and knowing what we're trying to accomplish and not ever hesitating out there. Just being able to play extremely fast every single play. So it's been fun to watch. There are six guys that are extremely explosive if you add running backs into it when they get the ball, that's what I told coach.

When Justin scored on that play, to me that was from the press box the fastest he's ever looked. He stuck one foot in the ground and last year I don't think he did that much. He hesitated a little bit, but he's seen it, and he did a great job.

Q. How do you prevent the letdown?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, I don't know. We're just going to continue to prepare like we've been preparing and go out there and play football. It's a great game. We don't get many of these opportunities. With a top 5 opponent coming into your place is always something that's going to be exciting. So these opportunities don't come along. We get 12 of them each year. We've got enough seniors that this is their last go around. I think it will keep us going throughout the week.

Like I said, we don't need to be worried about anything but doing our job and trying to get first downs and score touchdowns, which we've done a good job of so far. So we'll prepare all week against their looks and hopefully we can continue to have some success on Saturdays.

Q. You talked about some of Mahomes different checks. How much control have you given him at the line to change based on what he sees in the defense?
COACH MORRIS: Yeah, he has a hundred percent at all time. He has certain looks he needs to get out of certain things. At the end of the game, we worked on a four-minute offense the past couple weeks now. So there will be certain plays at that time that he knows are locked in. He did a great job of slowing the game down, letting it run. With us not huddling, it's kind of hard for the O-linemen to sit in there so long, but did a great job. Let it get down to under five seconds every time before he snapped the ball. He knows some of those plays are locked in, depending on what the situation of the game is. But throughout the course of the game, he has a hundred percent ability to get in and out of stuff that he likes.

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