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BAYLOR UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 2, 2017

Matt Rhule

Waco, Texas

Liberty - 48, Baylor - 45

MATT RHULE: Well, obviously not the way I wanted to come greet you guys. I would be remiss if I didn't start by giving credit to Liberty. Coach Gill. Just an unbelievable offensive performance and Gandy-Golden, 13 catches for 192 yards. Pretty much all of them with someone draped on him. I thought he took over the game and Mosley, the tailback, with 122 yards really when it mattered. And Steven Calvert, he did a tremendous job at the quarterback position for them. 44-60 for 447 yards.

So I thought really at the end of the day, if you look at what went wrong tonight, obviously, our inability to stop them in the passing game, to give up 447 yards, was disappointing. Certainly thought we would do better than that.

But we showed a nice balance on offense, didn't turn the ball over. But we're not good enough on third down. We were 4-12 offensively on third down with two fourth down conversions and they were 15-24.

So defensively we have to get a lot better. We're going to have to generate more pressure, we're going to have to get to the quarterback, and we're going to have to cover some good receivers as we move forward.

So as I told the team, I said I'm proud of them, they've worked hard. This was not what we wanted tonight, but that does not mean I'm not proud of them, not proud of their effort. I put this on me, I put this on the coaches, it's our job to get it fixed. I thought you saw a big play potential from the offense. Platt, Mims, I thought made big plays. Jamycal went down, Lovett came in, and he looks like he's going to be special. Anu had a very solid game, both running and throwing the football.

So we have to get a lot better quickly with a good UTSA team coming. But, obviously, feel bad for our fans and everyone that they came and we didn't play to the level we would have liked to have played to.

So as I told the team, I hope that they get up tomorrow, that they go help set up the shelters here in Waco for hurricane victims. The fact that we lost doesn't diminish the fact that people need our help. I expect to see them there, expect to see them working, and we'll go back to work football-wise on Monday and get ready for UTSA as we move this team forward.

Q. Did you expect their quarterback to be that accurate? I think he completed like 57 percent.
MATT RHULE: No. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. I have known Stephen since he was in high school. I thought he was on fire. He had a great plan. They were a two back team last year, a one back pro style offense, and we thought that they were going to move to the spread, and we thought they were going to do some of the things that they did. I just think he did it really, really well.

It's a mixture of two things: They got the ball out of his hand really quick. He made some big time throws on go balls to Gandy-Golden and at the end of the day, we didn't sack him. I don't know how many sacks we had, I don't think we had any. I think we hit him once that I saw and that was the young kid for us.

So if you want to be, if you want to affect the quarterback like that we had to him a little bit more and we weren't able to do that. We blitzed and we got the ball out of his hand. He did a nice job tonight.

Q. Overall, what did you see from the team?
MATT RHULE: I think, to be quite honest, it was disappointing in two regards. Number one, they were able to run the football and not just run the football, but also kind of drag us. And that was really the tail of the third and fourth quarter. Someone told me it was 10 straight third downs and they were able to manage third downs.

So really they controlled the line of scrimmage, and we weren't able to get pressure, even when some of those touchdowns were long third down versus cover two, tried to take a little pressure off the corners. And so we probably need to get a little bit more pass rush, a little bit more heat, continue to develop those guys so we can harass quarterbacks, and I don't know that we were able to do that.

Q. Was that surprising, or were you expecting it to be like that?
MATT RHULE: I think that one of the issues that we, as we develop, is just some edge pressure. We have some guys that are able to do it, but just on a consistent basis to be able to handle the passing games, we're going to see you have to be able to go out and attack with speed. And we're big, we're strong, we're physical, but that maybe hasn't been always our strength.

But I said I saw some bright spots. I saw BJ getting in there and him hit the quarterback twice, affect the ball. And so you have to go back and watch the tape and see. Probably some guys did a lot better than I realized as we go forward.

Q. How would you rate Anu tonight?
MATT RHULE: Yeah, he was a -- he ran the ball for 97 yards, so obviously made some plays with his feet. It says here he was 14-29. Had the one interception, so he did turn the ball over. He was good on the deep ball. We had a couple more chances on some deep balls to Tony on third down that we weren't able to connect on. But he had some drops, not Tony, per se, but I thought as the quarterback dropped back and made some plays, I thought he had some drops that could have really helped him. But I thought he was solid. And I think the dimension with his feet, rushing for a hundred yards or close to a hundred yards really helped us especially get back in the game at the end.

Q. The freshman Lovett, he played tremendous.
MATT RHULE: Yeah, he's going to be special. You saw a little bit of Dixon out there on the kickoff return. So those guys are going to be really good. Hard thing with freshmen is they want to play and they're kind of biding their time as they're waiting to play, but I think with Jamycal going down and Terence out a couple more weeks it was good to have those guys out there.

Q. Earlier this week you said when you name a quarterback that's who you're going to stick with. Did you at any time think about changing tonight or the game the way it paced you just never had a chance?
MATT RHULE: Yeah, I don't think Anu was, I mean we scored 45 points. I think really at the end of the day this was a defensive issue tonight. The route he threw the pick six on, he throws the ball to the right read, the receiver kind of gives up on the play, and the kid picks the ball off. You need your receiver, when you're running a breaking route, you got to cross that guy's face no matter what. So we did little things like that and I think sometimes when you do the little things, matchup, you jump for balls that are running underneath that you don't, you don't fight across the face of the defender and make a tough catch, a couple guys dropped some big catches, and those things start to pile on. But I thought Anu played just fine.

Q. Is this team able mentally to handle what happened tonight? They're very young, fragile in a way because of inexperience, do you have to kind of rework that this week?
MATT RHULE: No, I think I would look at that on the sideline, there was maybe a couple guys were kind of looking like, hey, why didn't I play more. But with a young team that is kind of how it is. But you didn't see any finger pointing, didn't see any guys yelling, didn't see any guys in the locker room saying, hey, defense, you did this. Offense, you did this. You saw a bunch of guys who said, hey, this is what happened, let's move forward. As I said to them, the way my mind thinks, I put this on me. Hoping every guy in this room says, hey, what could I have done. And if we have that approach we'll be fine. They're so young, and as I said, we'll learn from this and the sky's the limit. I think they will be good.

Q. Some of the cover spots in the secondary, is that something you just chalk up to inexperience and lot of youth playing on the back end?
MATT RHULE: You could say that. I'm not a big like I don't want to make a ton of excuses. At the end of the day, like you go out there and play and you have to play well. We had a couple guys in cover two, the safety, just as the guy's scrambling around just run up and cover somebody that wasn't where they were supposed to be and so while that's frustrating we as coaches that's our job. That's Phil's job, my job, is to make sure those guys are in the right spot. So, there's two kinds of big plays we gave up tonight, there's the ones -- where really three, right -- the deep balls where we were guarding Golden and he's jumping up and catching the ball, there was some missed tackles when we threw the ball on the perimeter, but the ones that frustrate you were the busted coverages. They're playing the right coverage, but they come out of it. So that has to get corrected, that can get corrected quickly if we choose to and I'm sure -- sometimes you have to have something like this happen, you don't want it to, to get you to say, hey, wait a minute now, I got to lock in. So, I didn't want to lose to Liberty, obviously, none of the kids wanted to lose to Liberty, but what are you going to do? You have to learn from it, move forward. You know, when coach is on the field and they say, hey, get to this spot, get to the spot. And that will be hopefully the lesson we can all learn from this.

Q. What's the word on Jamycal?
MATT RHULE: Probably a couple weeks. Probably about four weeks or so with his knee. But it's not surgical or anything like that. So it's like an MCL sprain they said. And I'm always hesitant on time frames until the next day, because they sometimes blow up or things change overnight. But Lovett Ebner and Dixon we're going to play with the three freshmen and see what happens.

Q. You played nine true freshmen in the first half or were there more?
MATT RHULE: I don't know that I would know the number. DeMarco didn't play in the first half, but he came in in the second half and he played. So maybe 10. I was proud of Blake Lynch. I know a couple balls were caught on him, but literally last Saturday in our scrimmage he was playing wide receiver and he moved on Sunday for the team. Verkedric was playing corner a week and a half ago. He moved to safety for the team. So we had a bunch of guys in the secondary that were playing new spots. Henry Black came back from injury on Tuesday to practice.

So they will get better, I know they will get better and we'll continue to try to generate some pass rush and try to affect the quarterback as we move forward next week.

Q. Is Lovett just very advanced for a freshman?
MATT RHULE: He's really talented, but he's also really tough. He's extremely intelligent and when he got that single digit, he got that single digit and he earned it. So there's not, JaMychal's a great back. Terence, I haven't really seen him, but we know he's a great back. But Lovett is special. And I think Ebner and Dixon are right there with him. So while it didn't really go the way we wanted it to, I think you see bright spots that make you feel good.

Q. Were you prepared enough for the spread?
MATT RHULE: We have -- oh, yeah, we have all the answers for it. When I say answers, I mean we prepare for things, but there was a couple things tonight that I felt bad about that we didn't look good at. Like they got the point on the muddle huddle, two-point play. We kind of anticipated them doing that. It's just, at the end of the day, now you have to, the game turns into a pass rush and coverage game and they just out-executed us in those areas. They had a guy that could go to and they went to him. We had chances down the field, we threw a bunch of balls we hit Mimsy on the one deep one that he kind of bobbled around and wasn't able to bring in. He was able to bring some other ones in. Denzel is going to be quite a player. But we had our chances for some other big plays that we weren't able to haul in.

Q. Did you know going in you were going to play BJ or was that something where you saw you weren't getting pressure and you thought --
MATT RHULE: We talked about him playing a little bit on Wednesday or Thursday as, hey, we're going to need -- is he going to play a ton right now, I don't know, but by the middle of the season we're going to need some young rushers, some guys that can bring a little extra energy to the pass rush group. It was not a rough and tumble game, it was a spread out, open game, that's what he does. We tried DeMarco as well, tried Deonte Williams as well so we put a bunch of kids out there to go play.

Q. Your corner backs basically have no experience at all in college football. Lynch is all of a sudden playing different positions. Even with the loss do they gain from this or is mentally this something that will be tough for them to get over?
MATT RHULE: No, I don't think. I think they will gain from it. They played for one of the toughest coaches there is in Fran Brown and I think Harrison Hand's out there, he's a true freshman. JB was out there. I don't know, JB was in the field so he didn't have a lot of interaction with Golden, but -- and then Blake, I think he's just a football player. So I think we'll have Jameson back next week. That will give us a little bit of juice, in terms of the rotation. And we'll get Grayland back in a couple weeks, but those guys will get better and I think we have proud, proud, proud kids and so they won't, I don't see them saying, well, I got beat, so I can't do this. I see them saying, I got beat and I'm coming back. Even the touchdowns down the stretch they weren't really any more going on those fade balls, it was a little bit more inside. So we have some work to do, there's no doubt, but I think the kids will come back and be ready to go.

Q. When you declined the chop block was that because the ball was on the 13 rather than you wanted the down more than anything else?
MATT RHULE: Yeah, the way they were throwing and catching the fade I didn't want to give them two chances to throw the ball in the end zone, because it was only like a 10-yard difference. So it was going to be, because of the spot foul, it would be second and goal from the 21 or third and goal from the 12. So we just said, you know what, let's give them one chance at the fade instead of two. The kid came down with the fade every single time, so, that was the that was the thought process. That's a little maybe a little unconventional, but I just wanted, I wanted to reduce it down to one play because I knew on fourth down they would have to kick it. It was whatever it was, just to make it a seven-point game.

Q. How do you feel the offensive line played?
MATT RHULE: Well I thought there was some good things. I was disappointed at the end of the game that when we get the ball back with a chance to go down and score we weren't able to control the line of scrimmage and keep guys off Anu at the very end there. I mean, he was hit both times he went to throw -- or the first two plays -- so, but that's a position you really kind of have to watch it. They had 243 yards rushing, I think that was obviously good. It wasn't -- I thought we could run the ball even better -- but I thought we played six guys, I thought they got in, I thought they worked hard. So we'll have to watch the tape to see exactly where we are at those positions. We played seven guys because Mo didn't play until the second half so having Ish Wilson helps us, but I would like to see us control the line of scrimmage even just a little bit more, kind of the way the other team did tonight, to be quite honest.

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