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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 10, 2016

Chris Ash

Piscataway, New Jersey

CHRIS ASH: Good afternoon, guys. Hope everyone's doing well. Appreciate you guys for coming. I'm going to start just talking about Greg Jones real quick. I know the information was released Saturday, I believe, that Greg Jones his been medically disqualified to compete in football for the rest of the year, and really for the rest of his career. It was a doctor recommended decision. He had a couple of opinions and both were the same. It's what's best for Greg.

Greg's an outstanding young man. Came here as a walk-on. Earned a scholarship after training camp was over, earned a starting position as a linebacker. When we first got here. The kid was a corner. I think he had moved to corner from running back in the past, but he was a corner. We moved him to safety. Found a spot for him to help our football team at linebacker. Plays the game the way we wanted our players to play it, and it was tough, relentless. Studied the game all the time. Great teammate, and we wish Greg nothing but the best.

He will continue to be around our football team as we go through the season, but he'll be missed out on the field, obviously, because of what he was able to do for us in the first few games. But happy to be able to have a relationship with Greg, but sad that his football career is over, but it's what's best for him and his future at this moment.

Yesterday, we met as a team like we normally do on Sundays. We talked about the first half of the season, the first six games and where we're at as a football team. We're a 2-4 football team. We talked about the four teams that we lost to combined 21 and 2. Three teams that I believe are near the top 5 in the country. When you look at their offenses, those offenses are all averaging in those four losses, those teams are averaging over 45 points a game. Giving up just slightly over 12 points a game. So they're outstanding football teams, and we need to put those games in that first half of the season behind us and get ready for the second half of the season.

You look at the rest of the season, we're excited to get the second half started, and it starts with a game here against Illinois. They're going to be challenging football teams, but if you look at the schedule, I think the combined records of the following teams are 17-14. Drastically different.

They're still very good football teams, very well-coached. They've got great players, but we're focused on the second half and getting ready to prepare for an Illinois football team that's coming in and very similar to us.

You look at Illinois, it's a team that's been in transition also. In this last year, they've had three different head coaches transition in the athletic department. Again, just trying to build a program that they want to have in the future also.

Coach Lovey Smith is a tremendous football coach. Spent a lot of years going to visit his defensive staff when he was a head coach of the Chicago Bears. I think he's one of the best defensive coaches in the game, regardless of the level, whether it's NFL or college, and a tremendous amount of respect for him and his staff and what they're trying to do there.

When you look at their football team, got an outstanding quarterback in Wes Lunt. They play two quarterbacks, but Wes Lunt has been their starter, and he can throw the ball. Outstanding quarterback. They've got an offense that presents a lot of challenges both in the run game and in the pass game for defenses. You look at their defense right now, they've got them playing hard. They're a physical defensive line and getting better in the back end.

So it's going to be a challenge. It's a 1-4 football team, but one that I think keeps getting better as you go through the season. And they'll come here ready to play and try to get a victory just like what we want to.

So with that, I'll go ahead and open it for questions.

Q. Chris, what will you do at quarterback this week? Will Laviano start? Will you split the reps differently in practice?
CHRIS ASH: Laviano's our starting quarterback. Has been for the first six games. We'll continuing to through the week of practice and see how the others are developing and continue to improve. We've played three different quarterbacks, really four with the one play that Gio had. But we have to continue to try to find consistent play at that position. You know, we'll continue to do that.

Q. Just to follow up on your opening statement, what was Greg's reaction to the news, and what is his attitude, his mindset right now?
CHRIS ASH: Oh, Greg's disappointed, obviously. But Greg's an outstanding young man. He's got a positive attitude. Anything he can do to help continue with the football team and help people in his position, he'll continue to do that. Tyreek Williams took over as the starting linebacker in this game and will continue to be that, and Greg is there to help guide, mentor him, and help him learn the position as he goes along.

Q. What changes can you make at offense to jump start it a little bit?
CHRIS ASH: Well, first, we've got to prepare and plan better. We've got to go out and make sure we're practicing better and detailing our work and our assignments. Everything we do starts up front. We have to play better on the offensive line. We've struggled to run the football in the last two games. We've struggled to protect the quarterback in the last two games.

Now with that being said, we've played outstanding defensive lines in the last two games. You've got two of the best defensive lines in the country. When you look at those players, both defensive lines are loaded with future NFL players and they caused havoc at the line of scrimmage. But we have to be able to be better on the offensive line to get our offense going. That's both in the run game and the pass game.

You guys watched the same game I watched the last two weeks. Quarterback drops back to pass, there's not a lot of time to pass the ball. When you've got defenses that can play press coverage like those two defenses can because of their DBs, and that's the style of play that we want to be able to build here. When you've got a defensive line that can rush the passer and you've got DBs that can play press man and limit your opportunities to get open, it's a pretty good combination defensively, and not so good offensively.

So we have to get better up front. We have to get better at the quarterback position. We have to get better at the wide out position. We're not getting open against press coverage right now. We've tried a lot of different things. It's not happening. We've got to continue to research different options to get guys open if we continue to face that style of defense, and that's what it is.

Q. All of that said about not only improving at quarterback but improvement at wide receiver, improvement up front, in a game like Michigan where everything was going right for them and it wasn't going right for you, how much can you make a true evaluation of a guy like Zach Allen in that situation, as opposed to a game maybe where it's a little more competitive?
CHRIS ASH: It's hard. Like I said, you guys watched the same game. That defensive line was relentless. They're big, they're physical, they're explosive, and they cause problems for our offensive line and our quarterbacks. You know, one of the sacks early in the game, Laviano dropped back and when he sat in his drop, he was hit. Not a lot of time to survey the field and go through his reads and progressions and get rid of the ball.

We have to be able to protect the quarterback better for us to get our passing game going. That was no different with Zach in there also. When you're in there as a quarterback and you take some of those hits, they may not necessarily be sacks, but the hits start to effect you, and there is no doubt that those guys have been effected because of that. And it is hard to evaluate a quarterback and his ability to make plays and move the sticks and complete passes when he's constantly under pressure and getting hit.

Q. Will we see him somewhere else then?
CHRIS ASH: Zach? Depends on his preparation.

Q. Coach, in regards to Josh Hicks, do you see him helping out on defense moving forward or is he going to go back to tailback?
CHRIS ASH: We haven't decided that yet. Obviously we had Kiy Hester and Saquon Hampton who we'd hoped would be playing last Saturday and was not able to play. We needed some more depth. We had to move Ross Douglas to safety and he started the game. We moved Josh over to safety to help provide some depth. What his future will be will determine what the team's needs are as we go forward.

Q. Does your personnel fit what Drew's running? Not just your quarterback, but offensive line and skill positions, does your personnel fit?
CHRIS ASH: I guess I don't understand your question when you say, "Does the personnel fit?"

Q. You talked about it early in the off-season that you would tailer your offensive system to the personnel. And everyone's been running pro-style for years. I guess the question is could you have incorporated some pro-style elements to it?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, I'll answer that question for you. We're not a pro-style offense. That's not what I came to run. And I'll just tell you, you talk about systems, this is something that media and fans in my opinion assume. When you're an offensive lineman, whether you're a pro-style or spread, what do you have to do? You tell me. What do you have to do?

Q. (Inaudible)?
CHRIS ASH: Exactly. When you're a quarterback, what do you have to do?

Q. Control and make decisions, make plays?
CHRIS ASH: That's it. Doesn't matter. You either got to block, throw the ball, and you've got to be able to catch the ball.

Q. I guess my follow-up would be obviously the spread you're going rapid pace, offensive linemen. Looking at different blocking schemes it seems like we've talked about it?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, blocking schemes are no different. When you look, you're an inside zone team. We're an inside zone team. You'd run power, you run power. What's different are the sets. What's different are the quarterbacks in the gun versus under center. That's what's different.

Q. And then at quarterback in a spread it system you need a guy to kind of change, it's an 11-man personnel.
CHRIS ASH: It depends on your system. You watch the spreads around college football. They're all different. There's ones that throw the ball. There's ones that use quarterbacks that are dynamic throwers. There's ones that use the quarterback to run. There's ones that want to use a quarterback to do both.

Ideally we'd like to have a quarterback that can do both because it puts a lot of extra pressure on a defense when you've got a quarterback that can do both. That's probably the element that we're missing right now is the quarterback that can do both.

But again, whether you're a pro or you're a spread, guys, you either have to be able to block up front, and you've got to be able to throw the ball. You've got to be able to get open on press coverage. You've got to be able to catch the ball. That doesn't matter.

People say, what is the system? What is that? It's a quarterback that can either throw or can't throw. And what we asked the quarterback to do, we've thrown in some quarterback runs with our guys a little bit. Can they do that? Probably not. We've talked about that.

We've got to really look at what we're asking the quarterbacks to do based on what they can do. Does that mean go up under center? No, it doesn't. That has nothing to do with it. Does that mean handing the ball off differently? No. It doesn't. It has nothing to do with it. In certain situations, can we probably look at what we asked the quarterback to do in terms of running the football? Yeah, we can do that. We need to do that. But that has nothing to do with whether they can throw the ball, catch the ball or block, or not block up front.

Q. Chris, we asked you this after the game the other night, just based on the regular Sunday meeting you had, do you feel like the attitude going forward is good? That the players were able to turn the page from a game like that?
CHRIS ASH: The players have been outstanding. I think there was more hangover after the Ohio State loss. Because I thought coming out of Iowa we had some pretty good confidence. We didn't win the game, but I thought we played well enough to give ourselves an opportunity to win the game. At the time Iowa was a highly ranked football team, even though they lost to North Dakota State.

Going into the Ohio State game I thought we had a lot of confidence. Obviously that got shaken a lot after that game. We saw that the gap is fairly large between us and Ohio State. We saw it was fairly large between us and Michigan.

But the players attitude has been outstanding. I don't sense that their belief in what they can be and what we'll continue to work towards being has changed. They look at the schedule. Like I mentioned the first half of the season versus the second half of the season. I think a lot of the goals our players would like to try to achieve, winning Big Ten games and potential postseason play. Those are all there. They're all available still.

You guys are the experts, and in listening to the experts after the first six games, I bet each one of you in this room would have probably put us at 2-4. Probably not with the types of losses that we had in the last two games. But we're working to get better. We're excited about the second half of the season.

Do I wish that the Ohio State and Michigan games would have been more competitive? Absolutely. But does that mean that the season's over because those two games are like that? No, not at all, and nobody's going to quit in the room: That's players, that's coaches, that's support staff. We had good meetings yesterday. We've had players in and out watching film for Illinois already today a lot. We'll go out and we'll have what I hope is an outstanding Tuesday practice and we'll get the week started the right way.

Q. You sort of just answered this in your answer here now. But did you make the point to them when you were talking to them about the level of competition now is not the top 5 teams? That there's an opportunity here to show people what this team can do? And I'm curious if you yourself are just interested to see what this team can do when you're not playing an opponent with NFL players across the defense?
CHRIS ASH: Well, I have a fairly good idea of what I think our players can do. We've won two games and albeit not Big Ten games. We played a pretty good Iowa football team down to the wire and felt like we had our opportunities in that game and we didn't make them. So I feel pretty good about what I think this football team can do, and I think the players feel really good about what their potential is. And we're going to go in the next six games and see what we've got.

I'm excited to see what we've got. I feel like we're probably a lot closer in terms of overall talent with the next six teams than we were in three of the four games we lost for sure, and that's just being honest.

Q. How do you see Tyreek Williams role expanded throughout this season?
CHRIS ASH: Tyreek, for a true freshman that's played in the last two games with relatively little work, I think he's done an outstanding job. Against Ohio State think he had 11 tackles and that's with very few reps in practice that week. He went out and did a nice job. Last Saturday there were goods and bads for him.

But, again, for a true freshman, I think he's gotten bigger, he's gotten stronger. He's got good football sense. He's always around the football. He's tough. He's got to get better at playing in space. And when I say that, he missed a couple plays in space against Peppers last Saturday that probably the majority of our players might have missed.

But I really like Tyreek's future. I think he's got a chance to be an outstanding linebacker for us. Talking to the recruiting experts, you look at Tyreek in his star ranking and the list of offers that the kid had coming out of high school, he's one of the best freshmen we brought in here. And I give our staff a lot of credit for the evaluation of what they made in Tyreek. I don't know. What did you have him ranked? You don't want to answer that one? All right. Thanks.

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