	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 22, 2015

Matt Limegrover

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Q. How do you fix your line?
MATT LIMEGROVER: Just go out and work every day. You know, I mean, you've got to mix and match. You've got to find some things that maybe guys you didn't think they were strong in an area. We used some time Sunday. I don't know if Coach talked about that. We went out and did a little more than we usually do to try and maybe see if there are some pieces that we haven't tried yet and try and get some guys where maybe they had been specializing before and get them a little bit more of a general -- get us a little more depth and get us a little bit more oomph in some areas. Today will be a big day as far as that goes.

Trying to get ready for Ohio but also trying to see if maybe some guys who didn't play on Saturday can help us in some different areas.

Q. I know you love the jet sweep questions, but it came up a lot in email from fans, in that game, a lot of running between the tackles and they were often loading the box. Can you kind of go into why you guys stayed so much up the middle in that game?
MATT LIMEGROVER: Well, one of the big things because that we weren't going to spread it out against them because they did so many different things. They were so multiple that it's hard to be able to -- it's hard to be able to put your finger on -- you want to make sure that you have people blocked. It was almost from snap to snap when you were preparing for them, the more you spread out, the more you started to get headaches trying to figure out where it was all fitting.

You know, whether you do it the way we did it and said, hey -- we didn't play well up front. I think that's pretty well documented. There were some things there that we didn't take advantage of. Even with the way it looked there were some things we didn't take advantage of. But also what concerned us was a team that -- we're able to do our best on the perimeter when we have a good idea of what the defense is going to do. When from snap to snap to snap it's a different picture for those kids as they're trying to go out and block, that's when those issues happen, that's when somebody gets missed, that's when the big plays happen on the other side, as far as your side of the line of scrimmage.

We look at it every week. We study it every week. You know, the one thing that Kent State did a good job is they had done two things that they hadn't ever shown before, and so we took a while to try and get that worked out, but then eventually we did, and a couple young kids didn't handle it as well as we'd hoped, and that's something that we've got to keep getting them caught up. It was amazing how some of the older kids picked it up. A couple of the younger kids because of how things were going with what we had, they struggled a little bit. That's our job is, okay, here, we're going to show this to you now so when we get it in the future, now you're a veteran at this, rather than it being the first time you saw it.

Q. When you have a player that might not be playing his best, how do you, I guess, pull them aside and maybe reassure them that you have the utmost confidence in them that they are still capable to get tasks done the way you want them done?
MATT LIMEGROVER: Yeah, that's kind of coaching 101. You know, you've got to figure out, because you don't want to completely wear a kid out, but at the same time you don't want them leaving the complex or leaving a meeting or what have you feeling like it's all rainbows and unicorns. One of the things, though, that is very important, and it's something that all of us coaches have done as long as we've been with Coach Kill, is right from day one when a kid gets here, we're up front and honest with them, so when we have to go to them and say, hey, you're not performing up to standards, it doesn't surprise them. It isn't like the first time they've heard that.

If we have to make a change, it doesn't come out of the blue. There's something that's led up to that. I think when you have a kid that isn't doing what he needs to do, that that isn't all of a sudden you pull him in and it's a complete shock to him. It's been a process, and you work with that, and you do that, and you make sure there's that line of communication long before it gets to a point where they're doing so poorly you have to replace them or something like that, and I think that's what avoids a lot of the hard feelings.

I don't think there's anything worse in my opinion in football. It happened to me when I was a player. I wasn't a very good player, but it happened to me when all of a sudden a coach comes in and he completely replaces you or he does something, and it's the first you've heard about any kind of situation or what have you. And so we all live by that. It's something that Coach requires of us. Hey, if a kid is not playing well, pull him in, show him on film, communicate with him. So that's a big part of what we have to get done in order for those kids to feel good about playing for us.

Q. How do you communicate that while the game is going on, or do you do that?
MATT LIMEGROVER: Oh, yeah, yeah. That gets a little bit more emotional. That gets a little bit more blunt, and then you have to go back and go, hey, here's what was going on, here's why. But the kids get that, and I think that also leads up to, it isn't you walk by them in the hallway and don't say anything to them, and then all of a sudden you scream at them. There's that constant line of communication.

You know, they have a pretty good idea, and then it's how they react, and that's also part of the learning process, and I think that's what we've been really stressing to our guys when we had them on Sunday in film session, hey, some things didn't go our way, they did some things we didn't expect, how are we as a group, as an offensive line, as an offense, as a skill group, position group, how are we going to respond to that in the future, how did we respond to it. It's almost like self-scouting yourself as far as how you handle situations.

Talked a lot about that. I think Coach mentioned that he met with each group after practice, and he said, okay, what went wrong from your perspective? What didn't go as well as it should? How was communication? How was the amongst each other? What can we do better next week? And if you have that, then you have something you can build on starting basically today.

Q. It looked to me like your guard was hanging on a little bit too long; was that the case?
MATT LIMEGROVER: Yeah, they played real heavy on us, and those are the things that give you some trouble as far as getting off, and they squeezed everything, and it gets back to Joe's question -- Joe had the question about one of the things that we did a little bit differently that we really like is we ran a little bit more, quote-unquote, outside zone or stretch zone. That helped us a little bit because they were jamming things in, and when you get that, you've got to have some of those things. It doesn't necessarily always have to be the jet sweep, but we're working on some of that stuff, as well.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297