	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

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 21, 2016

Chris Ash

Piscataway, New Jersey

CHRIS ASH: Welcome, as usual. Thanks for coming. Heading into week 12, the season's gone by extremely fast. It's amazing it's already coming to an end. But going to go on the road and play Maryland. Excited about our opportunity to go do that. Great respect for DJ Durkin. I've known him for a long time. And D coordinator Andy Buh is one of my best friends in the profession. Got a lot of respect for those individuals and the job they're doing at Maryland.

This game is the last game for this group of individuals to be together, and we're going to cherish every day and every moment we get to go out and prepare and go play one last game together. Every year is a different year, every team's a different team. We just want to make sure this group of individuals enjoys what they do and who they do it with and go out and prepare for one last game here together.

Taking a look at Maryland, just starting with their offense, their spread offense, very impressed by their skill players. Their wide receivers and running backs have good speed. D.J. Moore has been an explosive player for them on the outside all year long. But they have tremendous speed.

Quarterbacks, both of them can run. They've played several quarterbacks for different reasons throughout the course of the year. But they got some guys that can run, and the quarterback run game obviously is a big part of what they do on offense.

Defensively, the 3-4 defense, they're multiple with their fronts, pressure defense, and that's something that we have to be able to protect and go against and be more effective than what we have been in the past against teams that like to move and pressure with their defensive front seven.

Q. Do you get a sense this could be a rivalry going forward between Rutgers and Maryland?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. There's a lot of rivalry games that the Big Ten has tried to create here in the last week of the season, and this would be a natural one. We'd love to make that happen.

Q. With this being the last game, like you mentioned, do you do anything different game plan-wise to get different players involved or seniors that haven't played? How do you approach it from that standpoint?
CHRIS ASH: No, our game plan, the way we prepare for games, is not going to change. If you get into a game and it's lopsided one way or the other, and you could get some people in the game because they've deserved that opportunity, then, by all means, we'll do that. But we're not going to make different plans throughout the week in our game planning that calls for this guy or that guy, unless they are naturally going to be playing, and player role are a factor in our ability to go out and play our best game.

Q. Looking ahead after this week, do you have the recruiting itinerary mapped out and what you're going to do? How does that transition go into recruiting?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, we talk about recruiting all the time. Every day we talk about recruiting. Our December plans for when the season is over is laid out, it's mapped out. Our January plans, for the most part, not on a day-to-day basis, but what we're going to be doing is all laid out. Once the game is over, we'll be on the road on Sunday. Right away, that's the first day of the contact period.

Q. You mentioned knowing DJ for a long time. I guess kind of ironically you guys were on the opposite sidelines last year at the same time in that Ohio State-Michigan game. Just now that you're head coaches and whatnot, what do you remember about that? Will you guys kind of match up? You've had similar trajectories, I guess, and both came up under Urban Meyer. Will you ever look at that as a comparison point?
CHRIS ASH: No, I don't. I mean, I've known DJ just personally from years ago when he was at Stanford and I was at San Diego State. Got to know him through an interview process that we talked about weeks ago. But that's it. I mean, other than I've known where he's been, he's known where I've been, whenever we see each other, we talk. That's about it.

But comparisons, I'm not looking at anything. He's got a job to do. We've got to a job to do here. There are no comparisons or anything to that nature.

Q. With Darius and J. P-O, obviously two guys that are kind of fan favorites here and guys that fans will want to see what happens with them as far as how their careers develop and chances in the NFL, what do you think makes those two guys attractive to NFL scouts? Or if scouts were to solicit your opinion of them on the field, off the field, intangibles, playing defensive linemen, what kind of things would you say about them?
CHRIS ASH: Just the word that you mentioned, were the intangibles. The character that both of those young men have. Everybody in the organization can trust them. They do the right thing. They want to be the best that they can be. They work extremely hard. The other word is leadership. They provide tremendous amounts of leadership for not only their unit side of the ball but for the football team.

Can't say enough good things about either one of those. Scouts will watch film and make their own evaluation of their physical talent, but the intangibles that each one of those individuals has, I couldn't say enough good things about them.

Q. Obviously hindsight's kind of 20/20, but are you glad you played Tylin Oden this year? Do you feel he got something out of it? You could have red-shirted him. Do you feel he's progressed to the point where you wanted him to?
CHRIS ASH: I can't say he's progressed to the point that we would have wanted him to. Will he benefit from the reps he got this year? Absolutely. I think we're playing seven or eight true freshmen in various positions throughout the football team, and every one of those guys will benefit from it.

I do talk to the team a lot about this. I look at Isaiah Wharton and Blessuan Austin, two guys that played last year. Wasn't pretty football from what I understand last year. And both of those guys would admit that. But you look at the player development and the progress they made from last year this year, and it was because of what they learned last year playing probably before they were ready.

The they're much better football players this year because of it. I think there are several players on the football team that this may have been their first year of playing, whether they're true freshmen, sophomores, whatever the situation may be. That through physical development, mental development, maturity, that if most of our players can make the same type of improvements that those two players have, then I think we'll have an improved football team.

Q. I know injuries are always a dicey thing to talk about, but Robert Martin, has he been limited the last couple weeks? Has he just not been as good as Justin Goodwin? What is the deal with Robert Martin?
CHRIS ASH: A few weeks ago Robert Martin was banged up. Robert is healthy. Last week he had a complete week of practice. Goodwin has earned the right to be the starting running back and given opportunities to go out and get carries in games. Rob has, too.

But right now, Goody, over the course of the middle of the season, he has taken advantage of the opportunity that's been given to him both in practice and in games, and he's earned the right to go out and be our starting tailback. Doesn't mean Rob has done anything wrong. It's just that's what happens when you go through injuries. You have to earn your way back.

Rob is trying to do that right now. But it's more not about what Rob hasn't done or injuries, it's about what Justin has done to seize the opportunity.

Q. Are you doing anything for the seniors? I mean, there was a carry-off for the past coaching regimes. Do you do anything to honor them during the week?
CHRIS ASH: Yeah, there's a couple. It's a big week. You talk about two opportunities to honor your seniors. The last home game, which we had this last week, and then Senior Week. As we go through the week, we'll do some special things for the seniors.

The Friday night hotel meal at the hotel will be a special tribute for the seniors. We'll do some things after the last practice on Thursday that may be similar or slightly different.

I'm not sure exactly what's happened in the past. I haven't heard about the carry-off. But there are some things that will be similar and slightly different for the seniors.

But it's a big week. You want to make sure that they get the respect that they've earned and get the proper tribute that they deserve to end their career here, and we'll do some things throughout the week.

Q. You mentioned with the quarterbacks, with Gio, is it just right now a situation of him having to adjust to people adjusting to him now that they've seen him on film? The comparison I drew was like a baseball player who threw fastballs and has to learn how to hit the curveball. Is that kind of what we're seeing these last two games after his two good first games?
CHRIS ASH: I wouldn't say that. What you saw in Gio against Illinois was a guy that went out and really had nothing to lose. He went out and played carefree. Went into his first start against Minnesota, and thought he played an outstanding game. Wasn't perfect. He had a couple turnovers, but I thought he played a pretty productive football game.

Then he got hurt. Since he had hurt his hamstring and then against Michigan State hurt his knee, he just hasn't been at full speed. He thought that he -- he had communicated that he was full speed this last week, which I think he was, once he got to game time. Obviously conditions were pretty bad Saturday.

But Gio is just a work in progress. There's a lot of things that he has to continue to work on. Just look at him throughout the course of the season. He hasn't had a lot of reps in practice until he took over as the starting quarterback. That's just the way it is. Your starter gets most of the reps with the offense. Had not had many reps obviously in games.

He's continuing to try to improve in a lot of areas. Since the Minnesota game, he's had one thing or another that's kind of set him back a little bit. Whether it be the knee, the hamstring, and then the weather, and the opponent has a lot to do with it. When you're playing good teams, things don't look quite as good. That's just part of it.

But love everything that Gio brings with the offense with his energy, enthusiasm, work ethic, his leadership. We've just got to keep trying to improve on a lot of areas.

That's the other part of it. Like we talked Saturday after the game. Everyone wants to point to the quarterback, but there are certain things that you want to be able to do. But if it's not getting blocked right up front or on the outside, things don't look quite as good.

When you look at the Minnesota game, that was probably the best game our offensive line had played. As a result, what happened? The quarterback threw better because he was protected, and some of the quarterback runs looked better because they were blocked cleaner.

When you look at run game and pass game, there are a lot of things that have to work together. The O-line has to block. You have to block on the perimeter. Make the right reads at the quarterback positions. Unless all of those things are working together, it doesn't look as pretty. It has nothing to do with right now, today, Gio being healthy or not healthy.

Q. Just because you mentioned Austin and Wharton, thinking into the future, Hampton and Wharton and (indiscernible) are all sophomores. What's that do for you with the fact they could all be starters? I know other kids come in, but what could that do down the road?
CHRIS ASH: Oh, it's huge. We talk about that all the time. And I think I mentioned this after the Indiana game, it's not just in the secondary, but there were times in that game when Cioffi wasn't playing in that game very much, and then when J. P-O and Darius were off the field, we had 11 players on defense that will be back.

No, we have to develop them and they have to continue to improve. But you have 11 players that were out on that football field for a lot of good snaps at defense coming back.

Everything we do starts up front. We want to be able to develop our front four and our defensive line for obvious reasons, for stopping the run and putting pressure on the quarterback. But also we have to have a good secondary. If you can play well up front and you have a good secondary, you have a chance to have good defense.

The fact that we have potentially four players coming back that are going to be able to play for a few more years together, the future is pretty promising. We're recruiting a lot of defensive backs right now to come in to help create depth and also create competition, because competition makes them all better.

But really excited about those guys coming back together in the secondary. The three linebackers all coming back are going to have several years to play together. So the back seven, if we can develop and continue to get bigger and stronger and mentally develop with the scheme, I really am excited about what we could have here relatively soon.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297