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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 19, 2016

Chris Ash

Piscataway, New Jersey

CHRIS ASH: Appreciate you guys coming. Welcome again to another Monday press conference. It's good to be 2-1. It's obviously a lot easier coming here after a victory, but really appreciate you guys coming and supporting our program. Excited to be playing another home game, third one in a row, Big Ten opener. Very good football team coming in.

It's Big Ten football here in New Jersey, and a lot of college football fans here in the state of New Jersey, hopefully, whether you're a fan of Rutgers or not, you'll come and get a chance to watch an outstanding football game here at Highpoint Solutions Stadium this Saturday.

We'd like to just start by going back to last Saturday and congratulating three players that were our players of the game, Dorian Miller on offense, an offensive lineman, did an outstanding job, played a consistent game, physical game, helped us run the ball the way we did throughout that game. Defensively, Darius Hamilton continues to get better and better as we go along.

And Darius was a force to be reckoned with on the inside defensive line last Saturday, made a lot of big plays. The obvious one Janarion Grant is a special teams player of the week, with the big punt return for a touchdown he had and a couple other significant returns. Even some of the smaller things he did when the ball hit the ground to be able to field it and get down saved us a lot of hidden yardage, he made a lot of really good decisions. He had the one fumble, I get it. But he was a big part of us getting back in that game and changing the momentum of the game.

And special mention to David Bonagura doing an outstanding job kicking field goals for us. If we don't make those field goals he made for us throughout the course of that game, we probably don't have a chance to win that game. So happy for him and the progress he continues to make.

Just talking about our football team, I mentioned this before, but I really like our attitude right now. I like our desire to continue to fight, regardless of what we're faced against and the challenges that we've put ourselves in. But the fight-and-won't-quit mentality and approach to the game of football right now with this team is exceptional and really happy with the way that those guys have kind of bonded together and have done that.

You don't win those last two games like we've done after we put ourselves in holes if you don't have really strong character kids and a strong belief in what you're doing and in each other, and really happy for our guys to say that we have that right now.

Just talking about our opponent coming in here next Saturday. We've got a very good team in Iowa coming in. I know they lost last week. It doesn't matter, still an outstanding football team. They're as well-coached as any team in America.

You look at that football team and they really are what we want to be. They're always good at the offensive line. They're good on the D-line. They consistently have a fairly productive quarterback. You look at last year, you look at this year, you look at every year they've been successful, those three things are consistent. And that's what we want, that's what most teams want, and if you have that, you have a chance to go out and beat anybody.

And we're going to need to play a really good football game. We're going to have to play mistake-free. We're going to have to be ready for an 18-round fight up front on both sides of the ball. Our D-line against their O-line, our O-line against their D-line. It's going to be a game that's one or lost at the line of scrimmage for either team.

We need to take care of the ball. We need to win the battle of field position to be able to go out and compete in a game like this and have a chance to win.

You look at last Saturday, why did we win last Saturday? We were able to do those two things. We didn't, other than the punt return, we took care of the ball offensively, and we won the battle of field position with good special teams coverage and some things that we did there.

So, another special day for Coach Jay Niemann, really for his wife. She's got a husband coaching here at Rutgers and two sons that play at Iowa, kind of a unique situation. So we'll see where her loyalties lie here come Saturday. So really unique situation for that family. Two great kids, great family, and really excited for them to have an opportunity like this.

It doesn't come around much in college football to have a dad coaching on one team and two boys playing on another. So it will be a unique situation. I know where Jay's mind is. He's locked in and focused on helping us be the best we can be and go out and win a football game. But it's a special day for his family. With that, I'll open it up to any questions.

Q. Did you grow up an Iowa Hawkeye fan?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, I grew up in southeast Iowa, about an hour south of Iowa City. When I was growing up as a kid, I did, I cheered for Iowa. Actually told someone the story before. A birthday gift I got, actually it was a Christmas gift that I got at one point it was an autograph at Chuck Long football. Chuck was playing at Iowa, and I believe it was 1985, and actually went on to work for Chuck at San Diego State also.

So that was one of my best birthday gifts. It was a birthday/Christmas because my birthday is December 24th, but an autographed Chuck Long ball.

Q. Did North Dakota State give you a blueprint of what to do to beat Iowa?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, I mean, North Dakota State, you look at what I just talked about with Iowa and what do we need to do? They control the line of scrimmage up front on the offense. They did it up front on defense. They've got good play from the quarterback. Those are the things that you need to do and they played good special teams. You don't beat yourself, and those are the things that you've got to do to be able to beat a team like this.

Q. When you see a result, an upset like that, would you rather have them win that game and not be smarting from that loss? Do you expect Iowa to be a hungry team coming into Rutgers?
CHRIS ASH: Iowa's going to be hungry whether they won or lost. That's just the way Kirk coaches. That's the way that football team is. It doesn't matter what happened last Saturday. They'll move on to the next one. They'll be prepared for the next one. It doesn't matter to me if they won or lost. It's going to be an exceptionally well-coached football team, that will, just like we are, approaching a Big Ten opener and that's their goal to win the Big Ten. They'll come into this regardless, they'll come in prepared and ready to go, hungry to win a game, regardless what happened last Saturday.

People talk about an upset. North Dakota State's an outstanding football team. You look at the history of that team, and they've beaten a lot of people. Whether you want to consider it an upset or not, that's a darn good football team that beat Iowa last week. And by no means does that diminish what Iowa's football team is or what they're capable of moving forward.

Q. You guys have been able to survive with the slow starts so far. But moving on now you get to Big Ten games and you probably can't afford to get off to the slow starts. After evaluating the tape, how do you go about improving the start of the games?
CHRIS ASH: We just continue to do what we do. We have a process as I mentioned this last week as it was brought up about a slow start. We have a process of preparation that I believe in, coaching staff believes in it, the players believe it. We just have to execute better at the start of games. We're not going to go automatically and change what we do and who we are. We're going to continue what we do and we've got to do it better. We've got to start games better.

There is no magic formula for that. We're not going to go out and do any extra stretches or jumping jacks or whatever to get ready for a game. We have a process that I think is one that will lead us to being successful. We just have to execute better when games start.

Q. With James now at linebacker what have you seen out of him to make that move?
CHRIS ASH: Not a lot. He hasn't practiced much. But you know, who we have is who we have. We have some depth issues at certain positions and we have to fill those two deep as we prepare for a game and Ronnie gives us the best chance in our opinion to move to that position and be able to go out and hopefully play winning football on Saturday.

He's just getting back from missing a lot of time, and in the last couple weeks he's run around pretty well at practice. We think he's a physical player from what we saw in spring practice, and right now with our concerns at depth, he gives us the best chance there.

Q. Following up on that, how have you seen Tyreek progress from being sort of limited in camp to where he is now on special teams and as a linebacker?
CHRIS ASH: I really like the way he plays. He's on our kickoff team, and he runs down the field with his hair on fire. He goes down there and he's violent, does a great job with his hands. He's always trying to find a way to get to the ball. He does that on defense too. There is a little more to learn on defense than there is on the kickoff team, so it's more of a mental thing from that standpoint.

But he's a guy that continues to get better every single time we go out to practice. And between him and Ronnie James, we'll find out who is the most prepared and gives us a chance to go out and be the back-up Sam linebacker for us come Saturday.

Q. How secure is Chris Laviano as the starting quarterback right now?
CHRIS ASH: I'm not going to talk about that. Chris is a guy that has been our quarterback and he's no different than another position. Every single day we go out to practice, we will evaluate his performance. And I'll just tell everybody, if we felt like there was somebody that could go out and play the game better than Chris and give us a chance to win, guess what? We'd be playing him.

Chris has earned the right to be our starting quarterback. Does that mean that he is exempt from being evaluated and potentially lose his job? No, it doesn't. But through the course of spring, summer training camp and what he does on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of practice, he's earned that right.

Now does he still have to go out and perform? Absolutely he does. And we're not satisfied with the way that we have performed at the quarterback position this year in the first three games. But if we just go around and pull the hook on every player that struggles, does that mean we're necessarily going to put a player in there that gives us a better chance to win? I don't know. Sometimes you might, sometimes you might not.

So Chris is right now in a competition to see if he's going to continue to be the starting quarterback here at Rutgers. That's been the way since we've gotten here. He earned that opportunity to go out and start in the first three games. He's got to perform better. He knows that. We all know that, that's no secret, and he has to continue to get better at practice. If we're going to go out and win in the Big Ten, just as you mentioned, we've got to play well on the O-line, we've got to play well on the D-line, and we've got to play better at quarterback.

Q. Listening to your postgame comments in terms of bringing him out for a series it almost seemed like, tell me if this is the right analogy or not, when you take a point guard out for a couple minutes so he can see what's going on, take a breather and put him back in the game. Your plan was obviously to put him back in the game, which is what you did. But is that a good analogy?
CHRIS ASH: I'm not a basketball coach, so I don't know what they do with point guards. Someone asked me the other day about comparing the triple option to the fast break. I don't know. But I know this, Chris was having a rough stretch of the game. And we just felt it was best that we pull him, let him sit down, coach him through some things, get his mind right. And if he needed to go back in, hopefully he would be ready to go back in and make some of the plays that we needed him to make.

That's not any different. We've done that with other positions already this year. Couple of the O-linemen have had that scenario. Couple other positions on defense have had that scenario also. So that's not an uncommon practice for coaches to do that, and that's what we did with him.

Q. Did you leave (inaudible) in there because he's usually there the whole game?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, absolutely, and the quarterback position, slightly, everybody's going to see who is at quarterback, and I get that. But, again, we're not necessarily treating the quarterback any different than other positions. We watch these guys every day. You know, we know who we feel gives us the best opportunity to go out and have a chance to win games on Saturday. And, again, our job is to hopefully get everybody to go out and play to their full potential.

It's not happened at the quarterback position right now or at least it hasn't in the first three games. He's not the only position that we have concerns about that with, and we've got to continue to work through that. If there ever came a time where we felt like we needed to do something different, then we would. But right now, again, like I mentioned, Chris is out competing for his job every day he goes to practice.

Q. Some of the incompletions, were they mechanical issues or was it timing issues on some of those more simpler passes they were struggling to complete?
CHRIS ASH: There were a lot of issues. There were protection issues; there were routes not being run right; there's throws that are not being thrown the right way. There are mechanics involved when the protection's there, the route's run right. And mechanically, if we don't throw the ball right the result can be poor, but it's all of the above.

In the pass game, our pass game is not where we want it to be. We're going to run the ball, but we need to be more productive in the pass game.

Again, it's not just a quarterback issue. There's a lot of issues. If we don't protect it right and give them the time, we don't run the route precisely the right way based on what the play calls for, the mechanics of the quarterback aren't right, a lot of things can break down.

Q. Coach, the defensive line, I know you mentioned before in training camp that it was obviously the strength going in. How would you assess the three games in so far?
CHRIS ASH: I think they've done a pretty good job so far. You look at the first game against Washington, I thought the strength of our defense was the D-line. We stopped the run. We were stout against a pretty good offense in Washington.

Against Howard, what Howard did to us, didn't necessarily have anything to do with the D-line. They hit us on a big pass and got around the edge of the perimeter of the defense a couple times early in that game.

Then you look at this last week, the D-line is the reason that we were able to end up defending that option fairly well in the last three quarters of the game because of the way they played. The option responsibilities and the pressure they were able to put on the quarterback. Again, just like all the positions, we're not where we want to be yet, but I like the progress that I'm seeing, the work ethic, the chemistry of that group. Their performance continues to me to get better every Saturday.

Q. Coming out of non-conference play, maybe not just from a Rutgers standpoint, but an overall improvement standpoint, are you where you thought you would be and ready to compete against the best in the Big Ten?
CHRIS ASH: I don't know if we're ready yet. We've gotten better at some areas. We're not as good as we need to be in some areas. Am I excited to go out and find out where we're at every Saturday? Absolutely, because I talk about our process of preparation. I really like what we do.

I think the guys believe in what we do. I think we practice extremely hard on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Tuesday is a physical practice; Wednesday is still a fairly physical practice. Thursday we get a lot of reps on the scout team. Friday is what we call Feel Good Fridays, getting our minds and bodies right, and then putting the final touches on the game plan.

It's a process that I like, and we keep getting better. Saturday is a day to go out and try to prove that we are getting better. This Saturday we've got a great test. We're going to find out.

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